Suzuka, 11 October

The pre-weekend forecast had been for storms and a wet track today, but it seems the weather gods have decided to celebrate 25 years of Formula 1 racing at Suzuka with glorious weather, accompanied by temperatures and humidity levels usually associated with summer. The forecast for the rest of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend is good, therefore all today’s data gathered from a total of just over 563 kilometres completed by the two F138s will be relevant and useful when it comes to preparations for qualifying and the race.

However, the 49 laps completed by Felipe Massa and the 48 by Fernando Alonso lacked something in terms of pace, so that is the priority for the engineers tonight. Felipe ended up eighth fastest, two places ahead of Fernando. But Friday’s times can be hard to interpret and on a long track, that can be even more difficult as it’s not always easy to recover from incidents like Fernando’s harmless spin this afternoon, just when he should have been getting an indication of his outright performance on the softer tyres, but having two cars in one piece after three hours around this daunting and demanding circuit is already a positive, when several drivers went off the track.

There are few surprises at the top of this afternoon’s time sheet, as the reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel was quickest, the only man to break the 1m 34s barrier, ahead of his Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber. Third was the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg followed by the two Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, with Lewis Hamilton rounding off the top six for Mercedes.