Japanese Grand Prix: Jack Doohan okay after ‘heavy’ crash throughout follow in Suzuka

Jack Doohan missed the primary follow session at this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, as Alpine used FP1 to offer reserve driver Ryō Hirakawa an opportunity to drive in one of many crew’s required younger driver follow classes.

Doohan returned to the automobile for FP2 however banked solely 4 laps because of a “heavy” crash in Flip 1 that introduced out the pink flag and ended his day.

“To start with, I’m okay after the incident,” mentioned Doohan within the crew’s post-practice report. “It was a heavy one, one thing that caught me without warning, and I’ll study from it. I do know the crew has numerous work forward to restore the automobile going into tomorrow, so thanks upfront to them for his or her efforts.

“My focus is on tomorrow the place we could have Free Follow 3 to prepare for Qualifying.”

You may see the video of the incident right here:

Whereas telemetry information just isn’t out there for this specific lap, on a earlier lap Doohan was touring at 326 kilometers per hour when coming into Flip 1, which comes on the finish of a protracted straight and is on the finish of the one DRS zone on the monitor:

(Telemetry information courtesy of F1-Tempo).

As you possibly can hear within the above clip from the official F1 channel, Jolyon Palmer famous that Doohan stored the DRS open coming into the flip, contributing to the arduous crash. Alpine Crew Principal Oliver Oakes confirmed that within the crew’s post-session report.

“We’re all relieved to see Jack stroll away from his incident in Free Follow 2 and glad to see he’s OK after his precautionary checks,” described Oakes. “It was a misjudgment of not closing the DRS into Flip 1. It’s one thing to study from and I do know Jack and the crew can be prepared for tomorrow. His crew will work arduous to have the automobile ready after the injury.

“From a efficiency perspective right this moment, there are some issues for us to work on,” added Oakes. “Pierre [Gasly] had a very good run in Free Follow 2, which bodes properly for tomorrow, as did Ryo, who did an ideal job to run by way of this system this morning. We tried some set-up choices between vehicles and we now have a very good course to go in forward of Qualifying.”

On the opposite facet of the storage Gasly, who completed P14 in FP1 and P9 in FP2, sounded assured, in addition to relieved that his teammate was okay.

“It’s good to see that Jack is OK after his incident in Free Follow 2. Definitely, it was a heavy one and I’m relieved to see he’s effective after that,” mentioned Gasly.

“From our facet, it was fairly a busy day even with among the stoppages and we managed to suit many issues into our program. We tried some totally different set-ups and the automobile is feeling good and we now have one thing to work with for the remainder of the weekend,” added Gasly. In fact, extra operating can be helpful however we’re all in the identical place and we are going to give attention to maximizing what we now have tomorrow.

“The midfield is shut with just a few tenths between quite a few vehicles. That’s what makes it thrilling and we’ll give it our greatest shot tomorrow in Qualifying.”