F1 | Toro Rosso, Formula 1 debut for Naoki Yamamoto

Different day than usual for Toro Rosso at Suzuka. In the first free practice session, Naoki Yamamoto, a Japanese driver with his first experience in Formula 1, made his official debut. In his home Grand Prix, the 31-year-old Japanese and two-time Super Formula champion completed 30 laps, finishing seventeenth . In the afternoon he made way for starter Gasly, who together with Kvyat will have the task of bringing the Scuderia to the points here at Honda's home.

“It was a productive second session – Kvyat said. Taking into account the cancellation of tomorrow, we followed an intense program, a little different from usual, very demanding and with many laps. In Free Practice 1 we were not satisfied, but in the second session we made a good step forward with the car. Overall, we are quite satisfied with the behavior of the car and what we managed to do in the afternoon. We'll see if there is room for improvement for Sunday, but going straight to qualifying will be an interesting challenge! The conditions could be different from today, there could be more wind and therefore it will take time to adapt and a lot will depend on how quickly you find your rhythm."

“I spent the session getting used to the incredible power of the car – Yamamoto admitted. It really surprised me, I had never experienced such power before, so I would say that was the biggest difference between Super Formula and Formula 1. I learned a lot about the car and its balance and gave as much feedback as possible to the team. This is my home Grand Prix and many fans came to Suzuka, also for the first free practice on Friday. I was particularly impressed and I would like to thank all the Honda and Toro Rosso fans. I certainly would have liked to have achieved a better result than seventeenth position, but the most important thing is not to have made any mistakes and to have given the engineers good feedback. I wish the team the best result for this weekend, in particular to Pierre who gave me his car: I am grateful to him."

“My morning was calm, I was a spectator of Free Practice 1 – Gasly said. Driving at Suzuka is really fantastic: it's one of my favorite tracks, and despite having only raced in one session, I had fun and can't wait for Sunday. We knew that FP2 would be very important, considering Saturday's cancellation, so we tried to do as many laps as possible. We did a combined job of qualifying and race preparation and managed to complete several laps, finishing ninth in the standings. However, we can still find some performance and therefore we have to analyze everything we tried today. There will be more time than usual to do this and we hope to find the best solutions for what will be a very busy Sunday."