Gasly remains positive for Japanese GP despite missing both FP1 and FP3

Pierre Gasly has had an extremely quiet weekend so far. The Frenchman was replaced by Japanese driver Naoki Yamamoto for the first practice session while the third practice session has been cancelled due to the incoming typhoon. Gasly only drove in FP2 ahead of Sunday's qualifying session. 

While most see this as less time to prepare the car for the Suzuka circuit, Gasly looks at it positively. 

“It was quite a chilled morning on my side watching FP1. It’s really great to drive around Suzuka, one of my favourite tracks, and even though I only had one session, it was very enjoyable and I’m really excited for Sunday," Gasly said on the Toro Rosso website. 

"We knew FP2 would be really important as Saturday is cancelled, so we tried to do as many runs as we could. We did a combination of Qualifying and race preparation and we managed to do many laps and end up with the ninth fastest lap. However, the car was a bit tricky so we need to study everything we trialled today, as it’s OK but we can still find some more performance. We’ve got more time than usual to work and find the best solutions for quite a busy Sunday.”

If qualifying fails to happen on Sunday, then Formula 1 will use the results from FP2 to determine the starting grid. This wouldn't be a bad thing for Gasly as he'd start from P9 in his Toro Rosso.