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Grosjean enjoyed practice on super exciting Friday at Suzuka

Grosjean enjoyed practice on "super exciting Friday" at Suzuka

12-10-2019 10:19
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Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Haas driver Romain Grosjean said he quite enjoyed the running on Friday, with the Frenchman saying he'd be all for having Free Practice results being your qualifying result in general, as this could be exactly what's going to happen this weekend.

Grosjean finished in P13 in FP2, which would be enough to beat his teammate Kevin Magnussen should qualifying not happen on Sunday morning. 

The threat of the session being cancelled is mainly because typhoon Hagibis could cause significant damage to the circuit on Saturday which would leave the track organisers no time to have it ready by 10am on Sunday, which is where qualifying is currently scheduled.

Teams knew FP2 results could determine the grid, which is why the session was way more competitive than it would usually be on a normal Friday afternoon. Grosjean was a big fan of the concept.

“I actually think it was a super exciting Friday," the veteran admitted.

"I think it would be cool to have Saturdays like this, with FP1 in the morning and then FP2 in the afternoon, where you have extra tires and the result is your qualifying.

"You can work on the car, and at the same time push hard, I was trying different things. I thought it was quite a cool day.

"There’s obviously a little bit more pressure on that as free practice. This morning the car was good, but in the afternoon I was expecting a little bit more to be fair, I wanted to have three-four more tenths. We just didn’t have it, it’s a bit of a shame in that aspect.

"We’ll keep working and we’ll see if we actually do have qualifying on Sunday morning or not.”