There is a strong chance this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix will be the first wet grand prix of the 2024 season based on current forecasts.
Local meteorological forecasts for the circuit, set in the coastal city of Suzuka in the Mie prefecture, suggest a 50-50 chance of rain for Sunday’s grand prix.If that comes to pass, this weekend will see the first wet race of the new Formula 1 season and the first since last year’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.
The Japanese Grand Prix has moved to April this year, making it the first time this event has ever been held outside of its traditional Autumn calendar slot.
The result is that conditions for this year’s event are expected to be much cooler than 2023, when ambient temperatures were just under 30 degrees Celsius for the race. Instead, temperatures across the weekend are expected to sit between 11C at their coolest and 18C at their highest. This weekend is expected to be the coolest Japanese Grand Prix event for many years.
Friday’s first day of practice should be dry but cool. The risk will increase for qualifying day on Saturday, where around a 30% chance of rain is expected with skies likely to be overcast across the day.
But that risk of rain will increase for race day with early projections of a 50% chance of rain over race day. If the heavens do open, it could well be the second wet Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka in the last three seasons after the 2022 race was hit with heavy rain.
Drivers and fans will likely be hoping that any rain is not as heavy as that 2022 race, however. The event was infamously red-flagged due to the extreme conditions and suspended for around two hours before resuming and eventually ending after 28 laps – just over half distance. The race was the slowest grand prix in history, with a winning average speed of just 53.58kph.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
For more updates on the track conditions during each session keep an eye on RaceFans Live and the RaceFans Twitter account.
2024 Japanese Grand Prix
- “Am I in a race here or what?”: How Ferrari aced their Suzuka strategies
- Suzuka showed Mercedes “have a more stable platform” now
- Ferrari’s strategy gains in 2024 are “purely down to the car” – Sainz
- Tsunoda ‘at Verstappen and Alonso’s level’ with Suzuka performance – Marko
- Japan was first race where Red Bull’s winning margin was bigger than last year
Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
4th April 2024, 11:09
Oh no, I used to love rain races, but now they seem to red flag at the slightest puddle.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
4th April 2024, 11:35
I still hope for rain, hoping for dry races isn’t the solution, fixing the problems in order to run with worse conditions is, and they’ve done some attempts on that, although not with good results so far (wheel arches).
It’s been a while we didn’t get a wet race after a patch where we had quite a handful of competitive wet sessions last year, I liked particularly the dutch gp, where there was really heavy rain in the end and the commentators were talking about that even before it came, and for a moment it felt like full wets would be worth it, until ofc zhou (who I don’t really like) had to crash, bringing out the red flag…
Nick T.
4th April 2024, 20:24
Yup. Anything beyond nearing crossover to dry tires won’t see racing. SAFER barriers, halo, heavy carbon kevlar survival cells, HANS, better helmets, more runoff and the slower speeds are, I guess, still not enough despite the fact that we’ve only had one serious incident in the wet during the last 45+ years.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
5th April 2024, 4:32
Indeed, unbelievable! Safety wise we’ve had a record between senna and bianchi, with a 20 years gap between fatal incidents for f1 drivers, to the point f1 is now massively safer than road cars, cars get split in half and catch fire and drivers survive without big issues (just saw an incident where that doesn’t happen in the normal world) and were it not for bianchi where obviously it was negligence to send a tractor in that part of the track, we’d now be at 30 years without a death, and that was in the dry!
James Bond (@jamesbond)
4th April 2024, 11:23
Awesome! I love rain races. Brazil 2016 comes to mind.
tielemst
4th April 2024, 11:33
Whoa! Blow it off!! We can still move it to do another race in Bahrain, can’t we? Safety first.
Coventry Climax
4th April 2024, 11:43
Something is at odds here.
Nick T.
4th April 2024, 20:52
Never let the facts…
Nick T.
5th April 2024, 12:57
It’s now forecasted as completely clear. Strong chance!
Mayrton
4th April 2024, 11:51
Never gonna happen. Rain races are something of the past. Red Flag.
Lorengzte (@lorengzte)
4th April 2024, 12:06
Red flags for puddles, but no red flag when a driver is half upside down in the middle of the track. Makes complete sense.
Jere (@jerejj)
4th April 2024, 12:55
Too little time to red-flag anymore when the final lap is already ongoing, not to mention Sainz was already more than halfway through the lap, so VSC was fitting under the circumstances & generally also as well as SC conditions for a single lap.
Alesici
4th April 2024, 14:26
OMG Jere, you are still bleating this rubbish ‘it wasn’t actually possible to wave the red flag’ position? You were wrong and remain wrong. It wasn’t just me just me who corrected you. Stop saying this, or show us the rule that makes this impossible.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
4th April 2024, 22:55
Takes 5s to hit the button to signal a red flag. Give it a rest
tielemst
4th April 2024, 14:09
Unless he would have been face down in a puddle. That would be dangerous.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
5th April 2024, 4:34
Indeed, ridiculous behaviour by f1 about safety.
Jere (@jerejj)
4th April 2024, 12:58
Even if the race & or other running is rain-affected, the rain probably wouldn’t be heavy, given April’s precipitation average is lower than September’s & October’s.
Additionally, while this year’s event may be quite a bit cooler than last year’s, on average the daytime ambient difference is lower, around 20 or low-20s versus the mid-20s, so decently warm anyway, more or less like Shanghai at these same times of year.
Mr A
4th April 2024, 13:45
Lol. Didn’t they move it away from autumn to avoid this?
lynn-m
4th April 2024, 14:04
No they moved the race to now so it was grouped with Australia & China.
The chance of rain at this time of year is ever so marginally higher I believe. Certainly over the years the domestic Japanese categories I follow seem to get hit by rain earlier in the year more than the end.
I remember an April Super Formula race at Suzuka a few years ago that saw some of the heaviest rainfall i’ve ever seen during a race. They probably could have started a boat race on the track that day.
Nick T.
4th April 2024, 21:04
A combination of that (better for energy and team work loads) and while odds of rain aren’t much different, April is highly unlikely to brings washouts/typhoons.
Mr A
4th April 2024, 22:56
Why? Australia is nowhere near… well anything really. I can understand moving China to suit Suzuka, considering Suzuka is traditionally a late season GP. If that really is the reason, that’s silly. It’s still a long haul flight from Australia to anywhere, no point in trying to fit other races around it.
It doesn’t make sense in other areas too, why not just have it in regional rounds? USA races all grouped together, then next to Canada. Actually this has got me thinking…
01 Australia
02 Brazil
03 Mexico
04 Miami
05 Texas
06 Las Vegas
07 Canada
08 Emilia Romagna
09 Monaco
10 Spain
11 Austria
12 United Kingdom
13 Hungary
14 Belgium
15 Netherlands
16 Italy
17 Azerbaijan
18 Bahrain (moved for Ramadan)
19 Jeddah (moved for Ramadan)
20 Qatar
21 Abu Dhabi
22 China
23 Singapore
24 Japan
There. Sorted. Euro order doesn’t matter so much because they’re all close together anyway. And we have the rightful openers and closers in the correct place.
Nick T.
5th April 2024, 21:05
Their biggest reason is “carbon footprint.” The CO2 saved by keeping all the freight in the same region. I’m not personally endorsing tin
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
5th April 2024, 4:37
Wow, I would really like to see that, do you have any more info than that? I wasn’t able to find anything with a youtube search.
Park
4th April 2024, 17:09
To avoid typhoons, I believe.
Sergey Martyn
4th April 2024, 15:17
At last some good news from the kingdom of the boring processional races!