SUZUKA, Japan – Valtteri Bottas was the fastest man in town as Formula One invaded the Suzuka Int’l Racing Circuit on Friday.
Bottas was fastest in both practice sessions Friday for the Japanese Grand Prix, but his fast lap in the second practice could prove pivotal ahead of Sunday’s race.
The Swedish driver paced the important session, which could set the field for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix should qualifying on Sunday morning be canceled because of Typhoon Hagibis, with a best lap of 1:27.785.
“It’s been a very positive day for us,” Bottas said. “It’s always so much fun to drive these cars on this track. I’m very happy with the car in general, it felt good from the beginning. I think we can still make some small tweaks to improve the balance of the car, but overall it felt good both on the short and the long runs. We used some of the tires from Saturday today and the weather stayed nice, so we got plenty of running in which is great. We expect Sunday to be close in both qualifying and the race, so we need to keep pushing. We got an unexpected day off tomorrow but I’m sure the team will keep me busy; we’ll be digging into the data and make the most out of it.”
Lewis Hamilton was second in both practice sessions to give Mercedes a sweep of the top-two spots in practice. He was .100 seconds off the pace set by Bottas in the second session.
Max Verstappen was third fastest overall for Red Bull, followed by the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel.
With all on-track action scheduled for Saturday canceled, the next time teams are scheduled to be on track is Sunday morning for qualifying at 10 a.m. local time, with the race scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. local time.