This morning's free practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix went off as normal, with Scuderia Ferrari HP having a trouble-free time, getting through its programme.

However, the afternoon hour was frenetic, with the red flag putting in no fewer than four appearances, with several drivers not managing to get even one clean lap. In this the fastest of the two sessions, Lewis Hamilton was fourth quickest and Charles Leclerc was seventh. Obviously, with such a stop & go session the teams had to give up on some aspects of their programmes. This means that tomorrow's final hour of free practice that starts at 11.30 will be even more important than usual.

The team still acquired plenty of data to study tonight, including from the first sector of the track which has been resurfaced and is thus offering much more grip than in previous years. The wind is another factor to be taken into consideration and today it already affected car behaviour. Tomorrow, another factor to take into account during qualifying, which starts at 15 local (8 CEST) is that rain is expected for Sunday.

In the morning session, Lewis and Charles used both the Medium and Soft compound tyres, setting their best times of 1'28"965 and 1'29"051, which was good enough for third and fourth places respectively. In the final part of the session, they both reverted to the Mediums used at the start to run in race trim. Overall, the Monegasque did 27 laps, two more than his team-mate, making a team total of 52.

In the afternoon session, Lewis and Charles had just started their run on Hard tyres when Jack Doohan in the Alpine triggered the first red flag crashing heavily at Turn 1. After a twenty minute break to repair the barriers. Leclerc managed one flying lap, unlike his teammate, before another red flag, this time caused by Fernando Alonso, who ended up in the gravel at Degner Curve. When the pit lane light returned to green, Hamilton and Leclerc went back out on Soft tyres setting times of 1'28"544 and 1'28"617, fourth and seventh respectively. Immediately after, came another red flag, this time because the grass caught fire at the exit to turn 9. With just seven minutes remaining, the action resumed with the team splitting the tyre strategy, Leclerc on used Softs and Hamilton on Hards with a heavier fuel load. Charles now improved to 1'28"586 but stayed seventh fastest before another grass fire brought the session to a close. The Ferrari pair completed 14 laps each, for a team total of 28.

Lewis Hamilton: Overall it was a positive day. This is an incredible track and the first sector feels great - you can really push there, especially with the new surface. In FP1 the balance wasn't as good as it could have been, but we made strong progress between sessions and I'm happy with the direction we took.

There's still some work to do overnight, and with the weather set to change, we'll need to stay focussed - but we're in a good position and I'm excited to see what we can do.

It was amazing seeing so many of my fans in red, which I'm really grateful for and I hope I can bring them some good results this weekend!

Charles Leclerc: It was a constructive day, we tried many different set-ups throughout the practice sessions and I feel that I learned a lot about our car and how we can extract the most from it in the upcoming races.

We didn't put everything together, with multiple red flags and traffic interrupting FP2, but I think that our performance is better than it is on paper right now. It will be interesting to see how the change in conditions, in particular in terms of the wind direction, will affect tomorrow's sessions.

Check out our Friday gallery from Suzuka here.