Round 18 of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship started on Friday with practice at the famed Suzuka Circuit as teams prepared for Sunday's 53-lap Japanese Grand Prix - the historic Japanese venue returning to the F1 calendar for the first time since 2019 after an enforced absence due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Rain dominated FP1 but with potentially similar conditions expected on Sunday it was a key opportunity to gain valuable wet data. Kevin Magnussen was first on-track venturing out on the Cinturato Blue extreme wet weather tires, followed soon after by Mick Schumacher. A change to the Green intermediate compound followed as conditions improved slightly. Magnussen duly set his fastest lap of 1:43.258 (P5) with Schumacher clocking a 1:43.761 (P7). Schumacher's session, his first at Suzuka, was blighted by an off at Turn 8 after the checkered flag - the German unharmed but contact with the barriers resulting in significant damage to his VF-22.

Schumacher was subsequently unable to participate in FP2 later in the afternoon as a chassis change was required following his earlier accident. With his teammate sitting out the rain-soaked session, Magnussen again led the way and he captured P5 on the timesheets once more. With an opening stint on the Blue extreme tires, Magnussen switched to the intermediates and the Dane banked a best lap of 1:43.187 on his second outing on the compound.

Haas F1 Team ran a total of 45 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 - 32 by Magnussen and 13 by Schumacher.

Kevin Magnussen: "It was wet all day today so I was worried we weren't going to get any running but actually it was kind of good conditions for intermediates, at points it was a bit too much for them, but we got quite a few laps in. I'm happy for the fans who came out to watch the cars go round to actually see some running."

Mick Schumacher: "It was quite wet and unfortunately, we had an aquaplaning moment which ended up in us losing the rear. We've lost time and we've got to do a big job tomorrow, but the track is great, the car felt great today so hopefully we're in a good position. Tomorrow should be dry so we'll see what we can do from there."

Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "It was a mixed day today. The actual testing in FP1 and FP2 was good but unfortunately Mick could only do FP1 because on the way back from his practice start, he crashed pretty heavily and we couldn't fix it for FP2. The test program from Kevin was good and we got time to do some major changes on the car, to do a back-to-back of different set-ups thanks to the additional 30 minutes which were supposed to be for the prototype tire test. Tomorrow we will again have two cars out running in FP3 and we'll go from there."

Check out our Friday gallery from Suzuka here.