Friday washout will mean a busy final practice session

With dry conditions expected over the rest of the weekend, today’s running on the intermediate and wet weather tyres will have taught the teams very little.

“There is nothing we really learned today so everything needs to be done tomorrow,” confirmed Lewis Hamilton. “It is slippery, wet and there was also aquaplaning; not the most exciting conditions.”

As a result there’s little data to analyse from Friday’s rain-hit practice sessions. Persistent rain at Suzuka today will leave teams trying to condense four hours of practice into tomorrow morning’s one-hour session.

In final practice teams will need to get a move on to refine their base set-ups, conduct race simulation long runs and get a qualifying simulation done on the medium compound tyres. The latter is especially important due to the difficulties of overtaking at Suzuka, where there is only one DRS zone.

All the drivers will be hoping no one puts their car into a barrier and interrupts the session, costing everyone track time. That’s an ever-present danger at Suzuka where run-off is minimal in places.

The rain is a particular setback for the lies of Carlos Sainz Jnr, Felipe Nasr and the Manor drivers, all of which are experiencing the challenge of Suzuka for the first time this weekend.

Longest stint comparison – second practice

This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, right-click to reset:

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