Four red flags, one of them lasting for 23 minutes, meant there was very little hard data to work with second Japanese Grand Prix practice at Suzuka.
But some general patterns were evident in the earlier morning session in which a few teams even did some race stint simulations.
The headline is that McLaren’s advantage was apparent in both single lap and long runs and that at Red Bull Yuki Tsunoda was impressively close on pace to Max Verstappen.
Tsunoda appeared at ease in the RB21 immediately, worked methodically through his programme and ran ever-closer to Verstappen with each single-lap run, ending up just over 0.1s slower.
The man forced to vacate that seat, Liam Lawson, performed perfectly respectably on his return to the junior Racing Bulls team and run-for-run was within 0.1s of Isack Hadjar.
A newly resurfaced first sector brought a big increase in grip since last year and the fastest times are 1s faster than for the equivalent 2024 session, this despite a very strong and gusty wind, one which is expected to switch 180-degrees for Saturday.
Long runs in FP1
Norris 1m33.36s (7 laps)
Piastri 1m33.44s (7 laps)
Russell 1m33.49s (10 laps)
Leclerc 1m33.57s (8 laps)
Hamilton 1m33.77s (6 laps)
Antonelli 1m34.43s (9 laps)
Verstappen 1m34.432s (8 laps)
Tsunoda 1m35.09s (5 laps)
All drivers on medium tyre apart from Verstappen and Tsunoda (softs)
Just as in the race in China, Mercedes’ George Russell appears to be McLaren’s closest rival. His second-fastest time in FP1 was just 0.163s adrift of Lando Norris’ session-heading time, his long-run average in the same session just 0.12s slower.
The Ferraris were a couple of tenths off Russell (Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton separated by less than 0.1s) with Verstappen almost on the same time as the Ferraris.
Kimi Antonelli, on his first visit to the track, appeared to be struggling in the Mercedes as he played himself in gently, though he was consistently the fastest in sector 3.
“I'm looking forward to building my confidence more and more as we head through the weekend,” he said. “The balance of the car feels good, and I know there is more that I can extract from it.”
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Looking at the data traces of the best laps from Norris and Russell in FP1, the Mercedes is super-fast through the Esses and even marginally ahead as they crest the rise at the top of the hill.
But it is through the long fast turn of Spoon where the McLaren gains a big advantage, only half of which Russell is able to get back through the chicane.
The Racing Bulls were again impressively quick over a lap, though they were pushed for best of the rest status by Fernando Alonso whose Aston Martin was consistently super-quick through sector 1.
In fact, he had just gone quickest of FP2 in sector 1 when he crashed, after turning in to Turn 8 with an outside wheel on the grass and bringing out the second red flag.
Hadjar’s third place (and Lawson’s fifth place) in the headline times is flattered by the interrupted running of others, but only a little. The car was giving both drivers plenty of confidence to push.
"I think the window that the guys have at the moment is very very good and the car's been fast so far this season," said Lawson. "Hopefully we can replicate that tomorrow."
Oscar Piastri didn’t get in a good lap on the softs before he switched to the long runs and his FP1 time is not representative. He did however go marginally faster than Norris as the McLarens headed the FP2 times. The McLaren drivers were separated by hundredths.
The Ferraris lost a combined 0.3s in sectors 2 and 3 to Russell’s Mercedes and just weren’t holding onto their tyre performance as well through the lap.
“The first sector feels great,” said Hamilton. “You can really push there, especially with the new surface. In FP1 the balance wasn’t as good as it could have been, but we made strong progress between sessions and I’m happy with the direction we took.”
At Red Bull Verstappen was complaining of excessive understeer on the soft tyre.
“We were trying different things in the car,” he said, “and a lot of things weren’t clicking as much as we would have liked.
"It is quite difficult to put the lap down: you need quite a lot of confidence and commitment around here and, at the moment, I feel like I still have a bit of work to do.
"I was on the soft tyre, which requires a lot of management, and you can’t really push it.”
Tsunoda clearly didn’t experience the same difficulty in adapting to the car that Lawson had, though it did hold a few small surprises for him.
“It feels a bit different to what I felt on the simulator,” he said, “a bit more than I expected in terms of car feeling. It is a bit more exaggerated in the real car.”
Those who ran the soft for their long runs quickly found graining fronts to be the limitation and this was a much slower tyre over a stint than the medium. But even that needed to be looked after – with graining rears being the limitation on that compound.
Traditionally this limitation has made this a two-stop race but the improvement in grip from the new surface has most teams and Pirelli expecting to be able to one-stop quite comfortably, using the medium and hard.
