Japanese GP: Two Friday Crashes Make Hakim Danish down to Q1
It was a Friday of setbacks and recovery for Hakim Danish at the Motul Grand Prix of Japan. The AEON Credit - MT Helmets - MSI rider crashed once in each of the day's two sessions, yet still found enough pace between the incidents to climb to 17th in the afternoon's Practice session. He'll need to come through Qualifying 1 on Saturday to reach the pole shootout.
Danish's morning never found a rhythm. A fall early in Free Practice 1 limited him to just six laps on the session — well short of the 12 to 14 most of the field managed — with only three of those laps standing as representative times. What running he did get in showed promise: his pace dropped steadily from 1'59.471 to 1'57.898 and finally to a best of 1'57.254 on his last completed lap. That was good for 22nd on the combined sheet, 1.578 seconds off the pace.
The afternoon brought a second crash, but also Danish's best work of the day around it. Across 11 laps in the hotter Practice session — he lowered his best to 1'56.268, set on his sixth timed lap, nearly a full second quicker than his morning benchmark. That lifted him five places to 17th, 0.988 seconds off session-topper Marco Morelli, even with the crash and several cancelled laps interrupting his running later in the session.
The pace at AEON Credit - MT Helmets - MSI wasn't in short supply on Friday — just not from Danish's side of the garage. Teammate Ryusei Yamanaka topped FP1 outright with a 1'55.676, within a second of the Motegi lap record, then went second-fastest in the afternoon Practice session, just 0.016 seconds off Morelli's benchmark lap.
Danish's combined Friday pace means he'll line up in Saturday's Qualifying 1 group, needing to progress through that session to reach the Qualifying 2 pole shootout — a tougher path than the direct route into Q2 he enjoyed a fortnight ago in Austria. Two crashes and a shortened FP1 make the picture more complicated than the lap times alone suggest, but the underlying pace shown in Friday's Practice session gives him something to build from.
Credit Photo : ZK Racing
