Suzuka FP1 outing ‘pretty incredible’ for Crawford despite limited running

Aston Martin reserve driver Jak Crawford described the Suzuka circuit is “pretty incredible to drive" despite being limited to three flying laps during his FP1 outing for the team at the Japanese Grand Prix.

Fernando Alonso’s late arrival at Suzuka due to the birth of his first child opened the door for Crawford to make his first FP1 appearance of the season – something the American found out about only a week ago. He completed 11 laps in total on the hard compound tire after a bodywork issue limited his track time, but the 20-year-old still took plenty away from the outing.

“It was a great experience,” Crawford told F1 TV. “My first time at this track as well, and it was a great track to drive, even in these new cars with less downforce than last year. It still was pretty incredible to drive.

“It's a pretty special track. I'd never been here before. They resurfaced part of the track, so it’s super high grip, super high grip. It's one of the most fun tracks I've ever driven – I wouldn't say it's my favorite yet, I haven't got quite enough laps to say that, but Turn 1 was pretty incredible.

“You pretty much use all your all your battery down to Turn 1, so you don't hit the top of the pack in Sector 1. So, you end up not really derating much and you're going into Turn 1 at 300kph. So it's pretty cool and pretty exciting.

“I feel like all our sim work has correlated pretty well up until now. So it felt really almost easy to jump in and be on the pace straight away. So I only did three laps on that first run. I already felt up to speed and was already having a good feeling of the car.

“For me, it was a learning session and a test session, seeing how all this management works and how the car is as well. At the moment we're a bit uncompetitive, we know that, but I still think we're learning with every session. And a test session like this, even though I only got a handful of laps, is still very useful for us. And hopefully we're able to make big gains not only this weekend, but when I go back in the simulator.”

One of the major Aston Martin limitations has been the vibrations that the drivers are feeling in the cockpit, something Crawford says is still the main challenge to overcome in order to increase mileage.

“I think really all I can say is that it's there and you feel it," he said. "And it can be a bit of a limitation, both on the driver and from a reliability standpoint. Of course, you want to be able to finish the whole race. And I think, you know, maybe those (vibrations) can also affect that. So we're working as hard as we can to solve them, of course. And I think this weekend we can try and get to the end on this home race (for Honda).

“I guess this weekend, (the plan is) nothing super special from the last two (races). We've put in all the work, we qualify and we do the race. And there's really not much to it. We'll try our best to get the car to the end, manage the car best we can.

“Of course, with every session as well, we were behind on laps in testing where we're learning better how to make the car more reliable and fixing reliability issues. So we're hoping that this weekend we don't run into many.”