With Typhoon Haibis hitting the country, all track action for Saturday in F1 Japanese GP was cancelled by the FIA and the race promoters.
The F1 teams, drivers, media and everyone else had a rare off day in the middle of a race weekend as Typhoon Hagibis forced the FIA and race promoters to cancel Japanese GP Saturday’s sessions at Suzuka, with the predicted bad weather.
This shifts the workload of the teams and drivers and puts them in a frenzy with the qualifying shifted from Saturday to Sunday morning and the race starting at the scheduled time – provided there is no more cancellations or weather disruptions.
How did the drivers use their Saturday? With the typhoon hitting the city most of the town was shut down which meant the drivers were not allowed to go out of the hotel. So, most drivers decided to spend time together in the hotel.
The big party was where Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen was with the McLaren boys Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris along with Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and Williams’ George Russell joining in for a FIFA competition on the PlayStation in their hotel room.
They also had the 2019 Japanese F3 champion and former Renault F1 junior Sacha Fenestraz with them. The Frenchman was also with Sainz and Norris, when they spent Friday evening bowling together as the McLaren duo fooled around big time.
Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly was seen swimming around in the hotel pool, while Haas’ Romain Grosjean built a Tyrrell 6-wheeler model F1 car as promised on Friday and also went bowling and played on Xbox with his team in the hotel.
https://twitter.com/RGrosjean/status/1182956874666131456?s=20
While they did the usual, Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo took a stroll outside when the weather was still a bit better. The Australian happily showcased his singing talents. Outside the above, none other decided to showcase what they were doing during the day.
Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas was to stay inside and analyse his weekend. Bottas’ teammate Lewis Hamilton wished to travel to Tokyo and also to protest against the Dolphin slaughtering done in Japan – which he is against.
But it is not clear if the F1 champ did either or decided to stay in and play bowling or perhaps some of the Japanese arcade games. Alfa Romeo Racing’s Antonio Giovinazzi was to sleep and shake off the jet lag. The Ferrari duo, meanwhile, had no big plans either.
Charles Leclerc opted to sleep and Sebastian Vettel thought more about relaxing. Red Bull’s Alexander Albon was to stay in more as well and play bowling, while Racing Point’s Lance Stroll thought to chill watching Netflix.
There were not much updates on what the team officials did or even the F1 and FIA officials, while the team press officers spend their time playing games and or eating. Some of the media, meanwhile, updated on playing Monopoly being gifted by Mercedes. F1 also re-played the whole of 2005 Japanese GP on their Youtube channel.
It’s proper pic.twitter.com/NTh6tHaz2c
— Will Buxton (@wbuxtonofficial) October 12, 2019
A lot of them posted videos as Instagram stories as well to update on their goofing around! The serious works starts early Sunday morning but if qualifying is cancelled, the grid will be formed as per FP2 times. Additionally, there is no word for now if the F1 race gets postponed or cancelled if the weather is not fit by the scheduled time.
Here’s how the Friday panned out for the teams and drivers
F1 shifts Japanese GP quali to Sunday, cancels Saturday run for typhoon
The story had additional inputs from Venkatesh P Koushik