Grand Prix 2019 Japanese Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion.

Onward to Suzuka and the Japanese GP. Yakult anyone? Let’s hope that it’s more entertaining than the Russian GP, which excelled at only one thing, being dull.
Suzuka is built as the central attraction of Motopia a motoring and engineering theme park. Which really sums up F1 in 2019.
Michael Schumacher had six wins at Suzuka, and Lewis Hamilton has had five so far, will he win here and match Schumacher or will Ferrari get their act together and get another one / two. After Singapore I would have put money on Ferrari taking the win, in fact I think I did, but after Sochi I think that Hamilton will draw level with Schumacher. Although we mustn’t overlook Verstappen, this is a Honda track, it was built for them as a test track, and Verstappen is in a Honda powered Red Bull. Honda and the Japanese fans would love a home win, add those two facts together and Verstappen and his car might sprout wings.
Suzuka, from the drivers viewpoint, is quite a complex track, with its figure of eight configuration and cool crossover, slow hairpin bends, the uphill Esses a series of curves which if driven badly will lose the driver a bucket load of time, and then some flat out sections like 130 R. Plenty of scope for drivers to get it wrong, and cars and their engines to take a hammering. How do you set up a car for a track like this one. Red Bull of course had new engines at Sochi, Honda giving themselves the best possible chance to do well in Suzuka. The teams at the back end of the grid can be expected to struggle and a few to fall by the wayside. Although the days of just 9 or 10 cars getting to the end of a race seem to have gone.

The weather in Japan is Autumnal and there have been a few really wet races here, well certainly wet Qualifying sessions, with the occasional Sunday Qualifying followed by the race, there was even a Typhoon on race weekend back in 2004. All of which makes a tricky track, even trickier, but it also mixes up the grid quite nicely.
Anyway hopefully this track will deliver an interesting and entertaining race or at the very least a rain storm.
Enjoy.

Interesting Facts.
Honda have only ever won twice here
Kimi Räikkönen won this race from 17th position in 2005
Typhoons are common in this location
Lewis now has 322 points
Bottas has 249
Leclerc has 215
 
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Stay safe Radical F1!! I'll be thinking of you. I know what we said but don't take things too far from friend ;)

It does sound like it's going to be horrible. I doubt F1 will cancel, they don't usually, the rugby is also likely to be affected but it's awful for the people who live there too. This is in some ways even worse for them, sporting events come and go, they have to live with the mess this thing leaves behind.
Truly correct Angel. I am more concerned/worried about packing my disaster kit than the major sports events that will take place over the weekend (unfortunately) because my home (Denen-chofu area) is sitting next to the major river in Tokyo - Tamagawa river so we had some evac drill last month after the other Cat4 Hurricane. Will have to move my cars to upper ground by Friday afternoon. So much to do.
 
It looks like Hagibis will be over the Kanto region on Saturday , but as with all such storms, it could slow down, speed up or even change direction, but the current predictions puts it over that area of Japan on Saturday and it will have moved away by Sunday.
 
Thank you.
I actually thought that moving the race date would do good for Suzuka because historically been a lot of harsh weather during October here not to mention accidents. April would be a great timing yes.

id move it to November, swap with mexico out of typhoon problems & back to title deciding grand prix it should be
 
I don't think any track has the right to say it is a traditional title decider. I think F1 should map it's calendar so they move around the world in a logistically sensible way. Australia, Singapore, Japan, VietNam, China, Russia and so on. Ending in Brazil.
 
but there are grand prix that feel right in there place, like it would be weird to have Bahrain towards the end & japan history is based on title deciders
 
but there are grand prix that feel right in there place, like it would be weird to have Bahrain towards the end & japan history is based on title deciders

It would feel weird to you yes but thats because you got into F1 when it was in that spot. Australia was always the season closer when I started watching and still feels odd to me that it's at begining. But you can't throw sentiment in the way of change bud or it'll roll over you like a tank.
 
I’m with you RasputinLives I have long felt that the races should move in a logical fashion. It would also save the teams money. But I have a feeling that if they did that they would have a lot of personnel away from home for long periods of time, and they would probably complain, a lot. Things like ...... “if we wanted to do that we’d have joined the military. “
 
how about this great stat i found a few days ago. which surprised me as people because of 2005. people assume kimi goes well at suzuka
Screenshot_20191007-203633.jpg
 
Didn't win there in 2007 because they didn't race there. Look at his record there pre-2015 and you'll see what I mean.
 
Which if you look at how he went on other tracks during the same period is a blip. He's either nailed it from 2014 onward or the dominance of the Merc has been compensating. As it's far closer this year it will be interesting to see how he goes.
 
As before the dominance of Hamilton and Mercedes, Suzuka was one of the tracks were Vettel and Red Bull were pretty much equally dominant.
 
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