Good morning dear YawClub readers, here we are back after Carlos Sainz's unexpected victory in Singapore with the crazy (for us Europeans) Japanese F1 weekend. We come from a Grand Prix where Max Verstappen and the RB19 seemed to be in serious difficulty for the first time, so much so that once again this year the two-time world champion was denied the possibility of winning the grand prix at Marina Bay. Now head to Japan, here where he won his second title and the third could win, will he be unbeatable again? Let's see what the FP1 at Suzuka has to say.
The news from Suzuka FP1
During FP1 in Suzuka we should have seen the your shape of urethane Proto with 90 minutes of session, instead of 60 to test them, to fulfill the rule of eliminating thermo blankets, for which it is preparing Pirelli. The session returns to "normal" regimes without adding time. No extension but we don't give up on the tests.
Only four teams bring new features to FP1 at Suzuka: Williams, Alpha Tauri, Mercedes and Ferrari. As is evident right away also on Piastri's car, that even if we're only talking about free practice he got back close to his teammate's times and to the top positions, the updates that gave the podium in Singapore were brought to the other Mclaren car. Piastri also features a new engine, totally changed, in all its parts. Like him, Lewis Hamilton, Logan Sargeant, Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and the two Aston Martin drivers use new engines.

The lion mounting the bull
Max Verstappen is the first to take to the track, he doesn't want to repeat last weekend where Red Bull finished nothing more than fifth place, flow-viz on the car and a great awareness admitted by the champion: “Here we will return as you saw us up until Monza”. He demonstrated this without any problems in the first half of the session where, after running with the Proto tyres, he closes 1.396 s behind his teammate with the soft compound.
The session does not give us any further surprises from this point of view, even when Ferrari mounts the red, demonstrating the progress made after Monza, it is unable to get closer than half a second to the lion that mounts the bull. Who dominated the Japanese free practice session from the first to the sixtieth minute, where he won the world championship last year.

Work plans
Among the top positions, long-run work begins at the end of the session, The difficulty of Red Bull is a bit surprising as it has a lap in race pace that oscillates between 1.37.900 and 1.38.100, separated from Ferrari's race pace by almost half a second, a very positive long-run, between 1.37.100 and 1.37.800. XNUMX. We don't want to have vain hopes, not knowing the fuel load that the teams wanted to test in these free practices. We will probably have clarity in the second free practice session. Even Mclaren's race pace is promising given Ferrari's reasonable times.
On the flying lap Verstappen has no equal, the two Ferraris stand out, Lando Norris but a also positively surprising Yuki Tsunoda, energized by the atmosphere of home, who took the fifth time of the session, teammate Lawson also did well, finding himself on the first track since the debut of which he had prior experience, with the ninth time.
The Mercedes are missing in thirteenth and sixteenth positionThe session was also anonymous for Aston Martin with Fernando Alonso's sixth fastest time remaining one second behind Verstappen's time, and in tenth position with Stroll returning after the accident in Singapore.
Session ranking: Verstappen 1.31.647 – Sainz +0.626 – Norris +0.745 – Leclerc + 0.927 – Tsunoda +0.950 – Alonso + 1.003 – Piastri +1.066 – Albon +1.344 – Lawson + 1.358 – Stroll +1.393 – Perez + 1.396 – Gasly +1.482 – Russell +1.663 – Hulkenberg +1.801 – Ocon +1.869 – Hamilton +2.052 – Bottas +2.213 – Magnussen +2.328 – Sargeant +2.565 – Zhou +3.184