Animato

Date of the race weekend moved for both sustainability as well as to mitigate rain chances
Alpine brought upgrades to Japan
Logan Sargeant in Albon’s repaired chassis from Melbourne
Spare chassis won’t be ready until Miami
Daniel Ricciardo’s woes continue → looking into using a different chassis before saying he’s “shit”
Also calling the current run of form “a bit weird to comprehend”
Vettel unretiring? → Lewis hails Seb as a good option for 2025 when he leaves Merc
Seb and Toto have been talking???
Free Practice
Logan dipped a wheel onto the grass at the Dunlop Curve and binned the car
Remember: still no spare chassis
Super Formula driver (and F2 race winner) Ayumu Iwasa made his F1 debut in FP1
Would end up P15 in the session, behind Stroll and Bottas
FP2 would largely be washout → only 13 timed laps in the session
Qualifying
Alpine quali’d P15, P17; OCO, GAS
RUS was investigated for a pitlane incident involving PIA → NFA
TSU would make Q3 again → knocking out RIC this time
TSU P10, RIC P11
Merc’s pace faded as the track heated up
P3-P4 RUS, HAM in FP3 would end up P7-P9 HAM, RUS in Q3
Red Bull front-row lockout → PER only 0.07 behind VER
Race Day
After rain and subsequently cool track temps, race day brought track temps much hotter than expected
L1 T3 crash involving ALB and RIC → Lengthy red flag period to repair the barriers
RIC appeared to just move up the circuit and into ALB
STILL NO SPARE WILLIAMS CHASSIS
The start was re-racked and VER sailed off into the distance
Mercedes would attempt a one-stop after the restart and run long on hards
It didn’t work at all with both cars making an additional stops for hards and then mediums
ZHO would retire on L13 with an unspecified issue
STR and ALO would pit on L14 to swap softs for mediums
It’s here where STR would be investigated for unsafe release into a Haas
With 10 to go, SAR locked up into Degner 2 and brought out local yellows
RUS would launch a late-race attack on PIA and nab P7
PIA felt like he’d been forced off at the chicane
Red Bull 1-2 → VER-PER
Sainz would round out the podium
TSU would nab the final point