On his Fuji debut in a Formula One car, Kazuki finished both sessions in the top ten in front of his home crowd, while Nico concluded the morning in P12 and the afternoon in P13.

Kazuki Nakajima:
It was a pretty good day for me. There wasn’t much grip at the start of the morning session so I was struggling a bit with the car, but that was possibly due to the amount of fuel we were carrying. The car started to feel better towards the end of the morning and then felt much better in the afternoon on new tyres. We’ve tried out various set-ups today, which proved positive. The gap to the other cars is still very close though so we need to be a bit careful and plan well for qualifying. We'll have to see how tomorrow goes, but it looks like we’re on the right track.

Nico Rosberg:
It’s definitely going to be more difficult here than it was in Singapore for us. It was quite hard out there this morning in particular. We struggled with a slight lack of grip on the rear of the car and some oversteer, but we made good progress over the course of the two sessions and we ended this afternoon in a better position.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
We had a productive day of practice today during which we went through the typical set-up changes for a Friday and worked through the usual programme of tyre compares between the prime and options under race conditions. We’ll now work on qualifying set-up overnight ahead of qualifying tomorrow. No reliability problems at all.

Sebastian Vettel (STR3-03)
"Last year we ran mainly in the wet, so it was good to have a dry day today. I think this is one of the most difficult circuits when it comes down to setting up the car.  It is tricky  because  of the  mix  of a  long  straight,  some  high speed corners  and  then  some  difficult  low  speed  winding  corners.  Unfortunately, this afternoon, we had a hydraulic problem which meant I didn't manage to do the long runs I wanted. But the car seems well balanced, which I was able to check at the very end of the session after the boys had worked very hard to get me out on track before the flag. I think we should be fine for qualifying, but for race set up I would have preferred more time to do some long runs.  Tyre wise I think we are sorted though."
First Practice Session
Best lap 1.20.121 pos. 7th, 10 laps
Second Practice Session   
Best lap 1.18.761, pos. 8th, 23 laps

Sébastien Bourdais (STR3-04)
"It's my first time at this track and also my first visit to Japan. The track is not the most exciting but it's nicely done with a good bump-free surface and it's a great  facility.  It's  not  a  difficult  to  track  to  learn  as  there  only  eight  real corners.  But  after  that,  it  can  become  quite  tricky,  because  at  the  final complex, if you are too aggressive on the entry you pay the price on the exit, losing  time  for  the  straight,  so  you  have  to  be  careful  not  to  be  your  own worst  enemy.  So,  it's  not  easy  setting  up  the  car  as  you  want  minimum
downforce for the long straight and you want quite a bit of downforce for the complex and the two quick corners, which requires a compromise. I think we have got it about right so far and in terms of tyres, there seems to be quite high degradation, which is normal for a first day as the track began to pick up grip this afternoon."

First Practice Session
Best lap 1.20.182, pos. 9th, 34 laps
Second Practice Session
Best lap 1.19.040, pos. 14th, 41 laps

Japanese Grand Prix - Free Practice Round-Up
Friday 10 October 2008

Today's Weather: Dry and bright apart from a brief shower between sessions. Air 21-22°C, track 28-36°C
Toyota's Best Japanese GP qualifying: 1st Ralf Schumacher 2005
Toyota's Best Japanese GP race result: 6th Jarno Trulli 2006
Take Note: Jarno Trulli has a new helmet design this weekend after a competition run by Panasonic. The design, which was chosen by Jarno from a wide range of hopefuls, features a picture of Mount Fuji and is the work of 11-year-old Japanese schoolgirl Yōu Terano. Timo's helmet also has new artwork here at Fuji Speedway, including images of the Japanese flag and other Japanese characters.

Timo Glock (Car 12, Chassis TF108-07)
Summary: Full day, learning the track early on before setting the fastest time in the afternoon
P1 18th Best Lap Time: 1m 20.823s (+1.913s) Laps: 37
P2 1st Best Lap Time: 1m 18.383s (fastest) Laps: 44
"That was a good day. This was the first time I have driven at the Fuji Speedway so I had to learn the track this morning. It didn't take too long - two or three laps, but it's not an easy circuit. It's especially difficult to find the right compromise for the long high speed straight and the last sector which is very technical. But we sorted out a lot of stuff and we brought everything together for the second practice, which went well. I had a nice lap near the beginning of the session and it's great for the team to end up quickest on Friday here in Japan. So far I'm happy and it would be nice to keep the position like this for the whole weekend. That will obviously be difficult but hopefully the local fans will give us an extra boost."

Jarno Trulli (Car 11, Chassis TF108-05)
Summary: Another busy Friday, ending up with the 10th quickest lap of the day
P1 15th Best Lap Time: 1m 20.657s (+1.747s) Laps: 33
P2 10th Best Lap Time: 1m 18.863s (+0.480s) Laps: 45
"Today was a nice, smooth day. We tested several things in order to improve the car's performance. Timo and I carried out different programmes in order to collect data from all areas of the car and it went well. This is Toyota's home race so it is an important event for us. There is no extra pressure but we just really want to do well in front of our home fans. As a team we get a lot of support in Japan but the local people have also been big fans of me personally down the years. They always give me a great welcome and the support gives extra motivation for me to get a good result for them. We've been unlucky to miss out on points in recent races so I hope that turns around this weekend."

Dieter Gass, Chief Engineer Race and Test
"It's always nice to have everybody behind us on the timesheets - especially considering the fact that we did our best time early in the afternoon session when the circuit was still not at its best. Apart from that we had a very productive day. We had a lot of new parts on the car which we tried successfully in both practice sessions and we collected some interesting results from that. So where we are today is a very good baseline to look forward to the rest of the weekend. Needless to say we will be working as hard as ever to come away with a good result in front of our home crowd."