Piastri tops disrupted FP2 after Doohan, Alonso crashes and grass fires

Oscar Piastri was fastest in a McLaren 1-2 in second practice at the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix, as four red flags led to a truncated session.

After Lando Norris led the way in the morning session, McLaren team-mate Piastri had the upper hand later in the day as his time of 1m28.114s, that was 0.049s faster than Norris.

Four red flags led to plenty of running being lost, the first of which occurred following a huge accident for Alpine’s Jack Doohan.

With all the talk about the Red Bull stable swapping Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda, it was Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar who got closest to the McLaren duo in third place, although a number of runners did not get to set a competitive time on the soft tyre.

After the session resumed following Doohan’s shunt at Turn 1, a spin for Fernando Alonso also brought out the red flag, and it would return twice more before the end of the hour as scorched areas of grass at the side of the track needed extinguishing.

Carlos Sainz reported an early issue in his Williams but things were much worse for Doohan moments later.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing crash

Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Motorsport Images

Having sat out FP1 in place of Alpine reserve driver Ryu Hirakawa, Doohan completed just four laps before a big shunt into the barriers at the first turn – the Australian walking away having climbed out of his wrecked car.

The session resumed with just half of the time remaining but another red flag was caused by Alonso spinning off into the gravel.

When two more red flags were required late on due to separate instances of burning grass, it was Piastri who had set the benchmark time.

Tsunoda had impressed on his Red Bull debut, getting to within a tenth of a second of new team-mate Max Verstappen in FP1, but the delays meant the Japanese driver did not set a representative FP2 time on the soft rubber and so he dropped to 18th place at the end of the session.

Lewis Hamilton was fourth for Ferrari ahead of Lawson, while George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Verstappen, Pierre Gasly and Sainz rounded out the top 10.

F1 Japanese GP – FP2 results