{"id":4264,"date":"2017-10-06T10:16:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T10:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/f1vault.co.uk\/?p=4264"},"modified":"2017-10-06T10:16:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T10:16:02","slug":"japanese-gp-vettel-edges-out-hamilton-in-first-practice-by-two-tenths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/japanese-gp-vettel-edges-out-hamilton-in-first-practice-by-two-tenths\/","title":{"rendered":"JAPANESE GP \u2013 Vettel edges out Hamilton in first practice by two tenths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ferrari\u2019s Sebastian Vettel edged out his title rival Lewis Hamilton in first practice for this weekend\u2019s Japanese Grand Prix by two-tenths of a second. Like in Sepang last week, Ferrari has set the ball rolling with leading the pace on Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Red Bull\u2019s Daniel Ricciardo was their fastest a further tenth behind Vettel. The tightest between the top three suggests that Mercedes have solved their performance issues which affected them in the early stages of last weekend and Ferrari have solved their reliability problems which affected them going into qualifying and the race.<\/p>\n<p>Ricciardo was third ahead of Vettel\u2019s team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, with half a second covering the top four teams. The Australian set the pace early on, with a 1:30 then bettered that by half a second, but then Hamilton shaved a few tenths off before Vettel went faster after taking a few tenths off.<\/p>\n<p>Mercedes Valtteri Bottas was just under a second off the pace and was six tenths faster than Max Verstappen\u2019s Red Bull. However, both drivers suffered offs with the Finn going off at Turn One and Degner, while the Dutchman went off at Spoon.<\/p>\n<p>However it wasn\u2019t long until Suzuka claimed its first casualty of the weekend as Carlos Sainz crashed bringing out the red flag. The Spaniard got on the astro on the exit of the hairpin which sent him into a spin and saw him make contact with the barriers.<\/p>\n<p>Sainz was due to start at the back anyway thanks to a number of \u00a0engine component changes<\/p>\n<p>Esteban Ocon was seventh fastest in the Force India, heading what has become a very tight midfield. He was a few tenths faster than the Renault of Nico Hulkenberg, Haas\u2019s Romain Grosjean with McLaren\u2019s Stoffel Vandoorne in tenth.<\/p>\n<p>Grosjean\u2019s team-mate Kevin Magnussen was eleventh fastest in between both the McLaren\u2019s, however it wasn\u2019t plain sailing for the Dane. He was forced to spend most of the early part of the session in the garage because of a water pressure problem.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the final home race for McLaren\u2019s relationship with Honda Stoffel Vandoorne was tenth and Fernando Alonso twelfth.<\/p>\n<p>It looks as if it could be another tough weekend for Williams, as both their drivers were in the mid of the lower end of the times. Lance Stroll was fourteenth and Felipe Massa sixteenth, with the Renault of Jolyon Palmer in between them.<\/p>\n<p>The Toro Rosso\u2019s of Carlos Sainz seventeenth ahead of team-mate Pierre Gasly with the Sauber\u2019s rounding out the field, Pascal Wehrlein ahead of Marcus Ericsson.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/f1vault.co.uk\/preview-japanese-grand-prix-2\/\">Preview \u2013 Japanese Grand Prix<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ferrari\u2019s Sebastian Vettel edged out his title rival Lewis Hamilton in first practice for this weekend\u2019s Japanese Grand Prix by two-tenths of a second. Like in Sepang last week, Ferrari has set the ball rolling with leading the pace on Friday morning. Red Bull\u2019s Daniel Ricciardo was their fastest a further tenth behind Vettel. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[369,493,496,647,699,709,741,742,882,885,1011,1012,1068,1115,1130,1227,1283,1298,1422,1495,1569,1639,1642,1656,1707,1770,1773,1791,1800,1808,1843,1930,2025,2105,2149,2152],"class_list":["post-4264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-daniil-kvyat","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-felipe-massa","tag-ferrari","tag-force-india","tag-force-india-mercedes","tag-haas","tag-haas-ferrari","tag-japanese-gp","tag-japanese-grand-prix","tag-jolyon-palmer","tag-kimi-raikkonen","tag-lance-stroll","tag-marcus-ericsson","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-nico-hulkenberg","tag-pascal-wehrlein","tag-practice","tag-red-bull-tag-heuer","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-renault","tag-romain-grosjean","tag-sauber","tag-sauber-ferrari","tag-sebastian-vettel","tag-sepang","tag-sergio-perez","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-sukuza","tag-toro-rosso","tag-valtteri-bottas","tag-williams","tag-williams-mercedes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}