The Japanese Grand Prix is upon us and already we’ve had drama from Lewis Hamilton’s run-in with the stewards to the massive crash which completely destroyed a car
Track action is back and the first day of running at the Japanese Grand Prix wasn’t without incident. FP1 went off without a hitch but there were no fewer than four red flag periods in the second practice session of the day.
The first and most significant was Jack Doohan’s massive crash which completely destroyed his Alpine. That caused a delay of more than 20 minutes and even more time was lost for three more stoppages – two for grass fires at the side of the track and another when Fernando Alonso beached his car in the gravel.
The cause of Doohan’s crash has now been confirmed – more on that below – but it remains to be seen how it will affect the rest of his running at Suzuka this weekend. Also left red-faced were the unlikely duo of Lewis Hamilton and Lance Stroll who were both found guilty of breaking the same rule.
They were both hauled in front of the stewards at the end of the day’s running to explain themselves. And there will, of course, be plenty more for us to sink our teeth into as the race weekend at one of the iconic F1 venues continues.
Mirror Sport has all the major headlines and stories from the F1 paddock:
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Jack’s not Doohan good
The last thing Doohan needed while he’s fighting for his Formula 1 future was a big shunt, but that’s what he suffered during second practice on Friday. Alpine later confirmed that the impact, which completely destroyed the whole left side of the car but did not injure the driver, happened while he was still travelling at 185mph as he attempted turn one flat out.
That is usually possible, but Doohan’s mistake was forgetting to close the DRS flap on his rear wing, team principal Oliver Oakes has confirmed, which meant he was going too fast into the corner and lost control. “It was a misjudgement of not closing the DRS into turn one,” he said. “It is something to learn from and I know Jack and the team will be ready for tomorrow.”
Hamilton’s dressing down
Race director Rui Marques made it clear in his pre-event notes that “cars in either the fast lane or working lane may not overtake other cars in the fast lane except in exceptional circumstances” when driving in the pits. Safe to say neither Hamilton nor Stroll paid too much attention to that particular line.
Both were found guilty of failing to follow that instruction during practice on Friday. Fortunately for them, though, the stewards were in no mood to hand out a financial or sporting penalty and so they both got away with a telling-off and a formal warning this time.
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Max’s trust at a min
New team-mate, same old problems for Max Verstappen at Red Bull at the moment. Their RB21 car is very difficult to drive – even the four-time champion is struggling to get to grips with it and didn’t sound too enthusiastic about his chances of success this weekend.
“You need a lot of trust and commitment here, but I don’t feel that at the moment,” he glumly reported. “Today has been quite difficult for me. I’ve been trying a lot of different things with the car, but it seems a lot of things are not really clicking at the moment. It’s quite difficult just to put the lap down… We still have quite a bit of work to do.”
Tsunoda’s Suzuka report card
In more positive news for the team, though, Yuki Tsunoda’s first day as a Red Bull Racing driver seemed to go pretty well. He was just one-tenth off the pace set by Verstappen in FP1 – exactly where they want him to be – and seemed pretty pleased with how it went, even though he reported some of the same issues as the Dutchman in terms of his car’s driveability.
Team principal Christian Horner also seemed pretty pleased with what he had seen from his new driver and said: “I think that was a positive start for Yuki. He’s now in his fifth season in Formula 1, so he’s got quite a lot of experience now behind him. He certainly made, in a high-pressure situation, a positive start and he just needs to build on that now through the rest of the weekend.”
