The weekend of the eighteenth round of the World Championship opens with a turn affected by bad weather
Fernando Alonso fastest of all in the wet at Suzuka. On the wet asphalt, the two-time world champion closes the first round with 315 thousandths of an advantage over Carlos Sainz and 386 over the other Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc. Alpine in evidence also with Esteban Ocon, author of the fourth time but at 774 thousandths from his teammate. He doesn’t force Max Verstappen that muchfifth at one second and 114 thousandths, in the grip of the two Haas of Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher. Mercedes late: thirteenth time for Lewis Hamilton, eighteenth for George Russell.
Alpine and Ferrari compete for the top of the standings in a weekend start on wet asphalt only apparently irrelevantsince the entire Japanese weekend could give little space to the sun, with arace hypothesis in the rain quite popular at the moment. So everyone is on track, even if the number of laps covered by the drivers is not particularly high. Everyone on the track especially at the end of the sixty minutes of practice, with the precise goal of try the shot at the traffic light, precisely. It is precisely at this stage that Schumacher (who doesn’t really need it), he loses control of his Haas-Ferrari heavily damaging it.
No consequences for the German driver who occupies the seventh box of an anomalous classification … but not too much, given that the two Ferraris (for Leclerc an excursion on the gravel luckily wet and compact) closely follow the leader Alonso and that the “candidate” Verstappen is fifth, just ahead of Schumacher himself. Rounding out the top ten are Lando Norris, Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez, winner five days ago in Singapore. Missing only, among the big names, theand two Mercedes of Hamilton and Russellthirteenth and eighteenth with significant but insignificant gaps: two seconds and three tenths for the seven-time world champion, three and eight for his teammate.
