Japanese Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton happier as Mercedes bounce back from Malaysia with positive practice

Title rival Sebastian Vettel was fastest in the first free practice session before the British championship leader topped the time sheets in the second

Lewis Hamilton is in more confident mood than he was a week ago in Malaysia (AFP)

While Mercedes’ non-executive director Niki Lauda believed that the weather had largely ruined today’s practice sessions in Suzuka, Lewis Hamilton was feeling happier than he had a week ago when the team were struggling in Sepang.

Then they were using a new aerodynamic package that was intended to generate more downforce, but it took a while to sort out and Hamilton eventually reverted to his Singapore configuration to take pole position and finish second to Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

Mercedes then deliberated on set-up choice right up until the last moment here, and eventually the faction in favour of going with the new package won through.

“Of course, it was the right way to go,” said a trenchant Lauda, who has always believed in pushing the limits to make progress.

Hamilton was fastest for a while on the soft-compound Pirellis in a dry FP1, and then set the pace on the supersofts, until Sebastian Vettel first bettered his soft-tyre lap by six-tenths and then also went quicker on the supersofts.

But the gap between the Ferrari and the Mercedes on the faster rubber was only 0.211s here, not the whopping 1.4s it had been last Friday.

“It's been an interesting day,” the points leader said. “The car is feeling much better than it was in Malaysia. I'm glad that we had the dry session for FP1. In FP2, there was a lot of rain, but it felt really important to go out and assess the track and see how the car was feeling as it was not good in the wet in Malaysia. Now it feels back to normal, so I'm ready to race.”

Practicality is one thing, out giving the fans is something else, and Hamilton was one of only five drivers who deemed it worthwhile giving them something to cheer as FP2 was rained out. Fittingly, he was fastest from Force India’s Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez.

“The fans are pretty special here - to be out there in the rain, waiting for us to go out through the whole of FP2. That's also another reason I wanted to go out and at least give them a little bit of a show. So hopefully at least they got to see something as not many cars went out.”


 Hamilton made the best of the tricky wet conditions 
 (AFP)

Set-up is always a buzz word in F1, but here it’s a trickier game to play than at some other tracks because of the fine line between having decent grip in the myriad corners and good enough straightline speed not to fall prey to rival cars which are faster there because they have less drag. Once cars set up that way overtake you, it can be tough to repass them even if you can out-corner them.

Red Bull were again in the mix here, with Daniel Ricciardo lapping only 0.375s off Vettel’s morning pace, but unlike Hamilton, he was worried that this was a product of very high downforce settings that hurt his car on the long pit straight.

"Our pace was pretty good, but we still need to find a good compromise with the downforce we are going to run here," the Australian said. "We were relatively close to Mercedes and Ferrari, so not a bad day. But we know they will always go a lot quicker so we need to find a few more tenths if we want to battle with them in the dry on Sunday. I think we were losing a lot on the straight and I don't think it was just engine today.

"It looked like we had more downforce so we need to see if this is the best thing for us, or if we can find a better compromise with the corners and then the straights.”


 Hamilton topped the time sheets in a damp second session 
 (AFP)

Overall it was a largely inconclusive day because each team can never be sure on a Friday just what engine settings and fuel loads rivals are running, and besides the rain there was another disruption in the morning when 16 minutes of the session were lost when Carlos Sainz crashed his Toro Rosso very heavily on the exit to the hairpin. The Spaniard wasn’t hurt, but there was plenty of mess to be cleared up before the session could resume.

Through it all, Vettel and Ferrari seemed serene. Like Mercedes, they came here expecting to have to fight Red Bull too, but things went well as the German was fastest on both tyre compounds.

"It was a decent morning," Vettel said. "We tried to do a lot of things. The car was behaving well right from the start. It looks like everything is on plan."

The weather looks better for tomorrow, which should give the teams a better chance to hone their set-ups in FP3 in readiness for qualifying, and a race on Sunday that seems likely to be run in far better conditions.