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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apart from that in European races it wouldn't be able to fit in because you have the 2 F3 & F2 races in the morning. I disagree I think for tv audiences as well it works because for like me id probally end up not watching qualifying because I don't have the time in such a cramped schedule. (im talking UK as I don't know other countries) because in races like Australia China Japan Vietnam, used to be Malaysia. . if you've got qualifying at 1am - 3am & the race at 6am - 8am. we are likely to just wake up early watch the race skip qualifying

Well that's easy. You just run both sets of races on the Saturday either side of the F1 practice session (which we'd limit to two). You've then cut a whole day off a Grand Prix weekend saving teams potentially millions of pounds.
 
Well that's easy. You just run both sets of races on the Saturday either side of the F1 practice session (which we'd limit to two). You've then cut a whole day off a Grand Prix weekend saving teams potentially millions of pounds.

but where would F2 F3 practice & qualifying go. there not just going to turn up & race
 
8:30 F3 Quali
9:15 F2 Quali
10:00 FP1 (back to an hour)
11:15 F3 race 1
12:15 F2 race 1
13:45 FP2
15:00 F3 race 2
16:00 F2 race 2

F3 don't practice anyways so all you're losing is F2 practice and limiting F1 practice. If you don't want to lose that then just run F2 sprint race between Quali and race on Sunday.

Sorry for going off topic!
 
Yep. Have water, non-perish food, batteries, flashlights and secured the cars and house.
Mother nature, let's get it over with !:please:

You should probably set up a typhoon/hurricane thread and give us hourly updates. I have been the edge of couple of hurricanes but always got out of the way.
 
You should probably set up a typhoon/hurricane thread and give us hourly updates. I have been the edge of couple of hurricanes but always got out of the way.

agree on that as ive seen pictures on twitter looks horrendous. alot of devastation & see a video of japanese rugby team having to wade through knee high water to get training pitch
 
You should probably set up a typhoon/hurricane thread and give us hourly updates. I have been the edge of couple of hurricanes but always got out of the way.

I'm not sure Radical F1 is going to be visiting here, he's got too much going on. I hope he won't mind me telling you that he has let me know he's had to leave his house as he's worried it's going to flood. So he's safe for now thank goodness. I will let him know you're all thinking of him though :)
 
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