2024 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix, Friday

Today in numbers
Laps: 45 (Esteban 22, Pierre 23)
KM: 262km (Esteban 128, Pierre 134)
Tyres: C2 and C3
Free Practice 1: Esteban P11 (1min 31.935secs); Pierre P17 (1min 32.277secs)
Free Practice 2: Esteban P13 (No Lap Time Set); Pierre P16 (No Lap Time Set)

Esteban Ocon: “It was great to see the fans out in force today, as always here at Suzuka. It’s a shame they did not see too much running in the afternoon, so hopefully the rest of the weekend will be better. Today was about having a first look at how the car behaves with some of the new updates. It seemed to be in line with expectations in Free Practice 1 and we aimed to try something different for Free Practice 2, but we could not do that with the mixed conditions. Given the limited running it’s hard to get a full picture, but we will see what we can learn and analyse overnight to prepare for final practice. It will be a busy session for everyone to gather as much information as possible before heading into Qualifying.”

Pierre Gasly: “We tried a few things in Free Practice 1 today, which was the only running we did on Practice day here in Japan. There was some rain in the afternoon, quite unfortunately timed, so it meant we remained inside the garage for the one-hour duration. We learnt a lot in the morning session with the new parts. Everything worked as expected and we have some valuable data to run through to confirm a few more things. That’s always the most important thing in Practice, especially when you have upgrades running for the first time. We’ll see what we can do to improve the car ahead of Qualifying tomorrow. There have been no surprises so far and all eyes are on the rest of the weekend.”