It was another difficult day for Williams in a tricky start to the 2024 season as Logan Sargeant crashed heavily in the first session.
The American missed the last race in Australia when team-mate Alex Albon was given his car after a major accident in Friday practice because Williams had no spare chassis.
Sargeant, driving the repaired chassis this weekend at Suzuka, lost control at the high-speed Dunlop corner and did extensive damage to the front suspension, gearbox and nose, although the chassis was not damaged, much to the team’s relief.
Sargeant went a little wide on his first lap through the long left-hander that ends Suzuka’s famous Esses section when trying for his first time on the soft tyres midway through the session.
But he ran on to the kerb and then got sucked into the gravel, spinning and hitting the barriers with a sizeable impact.
Team principal James Vowles described the crash as “frustrating”, saying Sargeant ran wide because “he didn’t quite realise where he was with where the grass was on the outside and put a wheel on the grass.
“What you saw here wasn’t a driver making a mistake because they were pushing to the limit. It’s a very different type of mistake, a frustrating one by all accounts, because it wasn’t on the limit of what the car could do.
“There was far more turning potential in there. He just didn’t know where the car was on track relative to where he expected it to be anyway.”
Williams did not manage to repair the car in time for Sargeant to run in second practice – no great loss in the circumstances – but he will be able to take part in the rest of the weekend.
Intermittent light rain at Suzuka in the afternoon meant the track was too wet for dry-weather tyres and too dry for wets and only three drivers set lap times.
And with teams restricted to five sets of intermediate tyres and two of full wets for the whole weekend, and a mixed weather forecast for qualifying and race, they were reluctant to use them up in practice.
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri topped the second session from Hamilton. They, along with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, were the only drivers to set a flying lap on slick tyres as the track dried slightly at the end of the session.
Formula 2 driver Ayumu Iwasa was 16th fastest in the first session, just under a second slower than Tsunoda, on a run-out in Ricciardo’s RB at his home event as part of his driver development programme for Red Bull.