Bottas leads charge in Mercedes one-two at Suzuka - Japanese Grand Prix FP1 report

Valtteri Bottas has led a Mercedes one-two at Suzuka in Free Practice 1, with the German works team needing exactly that result on Sunday for them to clinch their sixth consecutive constructors' championship.

The Silver Arrows were within a tenth of a second of each other with Lewis Hamilton in P2 but almost a full second quicker than Ferrari on Friday morning at Suzuka, where there will be no running on Saturday because of typhoon Hagibis and it's 200 mp/h winds hitting the circuit.

Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston Martin Red Bull Racing finished the session in that order, with Bottas, Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen all beating their respective teammates.

The session also featured Japanese driver Naoki Yamamoto, who occupied Pierre Gasly's STR14 for this session only, with the 31-year-old finishing 17th on the timesheets, a tenth of a second behind Toro Rosso's other driver in Daniil Kvyat.

The session had barely gotten underway before the Virtual Safety Car already had to be deployed. Carlos Sainz' MCL34 already had a mechanical failure just about 100 yards after pulling out of the pitlane with what seemed like gearbox issues.

The other driver that started reporting issues during the session was Antonio Giovinazzi, who had hydraulics issues that cost him almost the entire session, leaving him without valuable time on track and data.

As FP3 is scrapped on Saturday and all teams thus have an hour less of practice before qualifying on Sunday morning, the track was quite busy, a trend which should continue for FP2 later today. With qualifying simulations usually being done in later sessions, we'll get a better idea of what team has the best shot at pole position on Sunday at 10am local time.

Apart from the top three teams, the top ten was completed by two other teams in McLaren and Racing Point. Sainz, who had those issues at the start of the session, led the midfield as he ended in P7, closely followed by Sergio Pérez and Lance Stroll, who were in a McLaren sandwich as Lando Norris was in P10.