Sainz tops wet FP1

Sep 25, 2015
2 min read

The overnight rain from Thursday night at Suzuka continued to fall during the morning practice session, which meant there was a long silence on the circuit before the drivers took to the track for timed laps in the latter half of the session.

Even so, only twelve drivers set a lap time. Daniel Ricciardo, Fernando Alonso, the two Force Indias, the two Manors and the two Lotuses decided not to risk going out in the slippery conditions. Lotus, especially, could not afford a car in the barrier, having seen in Singapore that they are short on spare parts.

They have been facing a tough time already in Suzuka, as their sea freight was late and they were locked out of their hospitality area when they arrived at the circuit.

Carlos Sainz was the fastest of those who elected to set a time, marking the first time in his F1 career that the Spaniard has topped a practice session. He did so on the intermediate tyre, ahead of his Red Bull senior Daniil Kvyat. Nico Rosberg was the fastest man on the wet tyre in 3rd with his team mate 5th, and Sebastian Vettel putting himself between the two Silver Arrows.

We had hoped to see if Mercedes would be back of form after being 1.5 seconds off Ferrari last weekend in Singapore. Rain is expected in FP2 as well so, with Saturday and Sunday expected to be dry, a rushed FP3 may result in this weekend not being totally reliable in judging the relative performance between the two teams.

Further down the order we saw cars having some off track adventures. Max Verstappen was the first man to set a lap time during the session, with a big snap of oversteer on the run out of the hairpin, before running wide at Spoon Curve later in the session.

The two Williams appeared to struggle in the conditions. They were among the first to use the intermediate tyre, and looked to have very little grip. They were running closely with the Saubers on the wet tyres. Jenson Button had the slowest lap time of the session.

Final classification