Practice 3 Report - Halfway up a mountain in Japan

The practice session for the Japanese GP on Saturday morning was seriously disrupted by fog. The session was delayed by half an hour because the medical helicopter was unable to fly. The cars were then allowed out but after four minutes the red flags were shown as the fog descended again. Eventually the session was abandoned and there was very serious doubt that the fog would lift sufficiently for qualifying to take place.

If that turns out to be the case, the session would have to be moved to Sunday morning, as happened at Suzuka in 2004 after the passage of Typhoon Ma-on on the Saturday.

The weather - and the forecast for Sunday - is raising questions as to whether it might be commonsense not to take F1 cars to a race track that sits halfway up a mountain in the late autumn.