Team Summary:
The opening Friday practice session for the 2016 Japanese Grand Prix would see Williams Martini drivers finish in tenth and sixteenth with Valtteri Bottas leading team-mate Felipe Massa. Both drivers had focused on the medium tyre whilst the quickest time was set with the soft. With the start of the session drivers would come out running on a mixture of hard and medium tyres. Teams were splitting their drivers with one of hard and the other mediums. Grosjean would set a 1m:35.795 with Button now second. Vettel would go quickest with a 1m:34.150, running on the hard tyre, with Alonso second. Raikkonen would go second, on the medium tyre, with a 1m:34.408, making it a Ferrari one-two. Sainz and Kvyat were third and fourth with Felipe fifth. Perez was now third on the hard tyre. But team-mate Hulkenberg would go third, also on the hard tyre, with Perez fourth. Of the top ten only Raikkonen and Felipe were on the medium tyre.

Rosberg would go quickest with a 1m:33.758 running on the medium tyre. But Hamilton would go quicker with a 1m:33.475 but he was on the hard tyre. Verstappen was up to third followed by Vettel, Ricciardo, and Raikkonen sixth. Drivers would start to come out on the soft tyre including Vettel and Hulkenberg. Using the soft tyre Vettel would set a 1m:33.103 to be quickest from Hamilton. Hulkenberg would set a 1m:33.873 to be fifth. Perez was now third, 1m:33.570, splitting the Mercedes cars. Rosberg was on a soft tyre run setting a 1m:32.250 to be quickest from Vettel by 0.853s. Raikkonen would go second with a 1m:32.573 but Hamilton would take this spot with a 1m:32.322 to be behind Rosberg by 0.072s.

With Gutierrez having stopped his car on the side of the track the Virtual safety Car would be deployed. This would spoil a lap from Ricciardo and Verstappen. With forty five minutes remaining the track was quite empty but the Virtual Safety Car would be turned off seeing drivers come back out, including both Williams. The pair were currently ninth and eleventh as they continued a long run on the soft tyre. Both Williams drivers were setting times in the mid to high 1m:39s. Still neither Williams cars were in the top ten of the speed traps. Rosberg and Hamilton were back out on the medium and hard tyres. The order was Rosberg, Hamilton, Raikkonen, Verstappen, Vettel, Perez, Hulkenberg, Alonso, Bottas and Sainz tenth. With ten minutes remaining the track was very busy as both Williams cars continued to lap the circuit. The Williams pair would finish in ninth and eleventh.

Valtteri Bottas:
Valtteri would come out running on the hard tyre with the Williams team also splitting their programme. Valtteri would set a 1m:35.183 to be fifth behind Perez. He would drop to ninth and would also pit after a five lap run. With just under an hour remaining Valtteri would return to the track also on a new set of soft tyres. Valtteri would set a 1m:34.028 to be eighth dropping to ninth. Valtteri would return after the end of the Safety Car period continuing to run on the same set of soft tyres. Valtteri would commence a longer run on the soft tyres and the last half hour of the session commenced. Valtteri would pit switching to the hard tyre for a further longer run. Valtteri was lapping in the high 1m:39s on his run. With the end of the session Valtteri would complete twenty laps on the hard tyre.

Felipe Massa:
Felipe would be first out for Williams continuing on the medium tyre with a new set. He would set a 1m:35.371 to be fifth then sixth. Felipe would comment that he had traffic on his first lap. He would drop to eighth and would pit having completed four laps. He would drop to twelfth sitting in his garage. He would return with just over and hour and five minutes left in the session, this time on a set of new soft tyres. Felipe was on a quicker lap setting a 1m:34.127 but the car still looked like it way too much understeer just as in the first session. This would see him sixth dropping to seventh. Felipe would complete another lap but would fail to improve. He would pit after four laps. Felipe would drop to tenth to be behind his team-mate. Felipe was also back out on the used soft tyres.

Felipe would run wide at Degner after locking up and would only just miss going onto the gravel. After a long run on the soft tyre he would pit taking on a new set of medium tyres for another run. Felipe was running in the mid 1m:39s as the session ended having completed seventeen laps on the medium tyre.

Pos  Driver         	Team		        Time     Laps
1  Nico Rosberg 	Mercedes 		1m32.250s 35 
2  Lewis Hamilton 	Mercedes 		1m32.322s 35 
3  Kimi Raikkonen 	Ferrari 		1m32.573s 26 
4  Max Verstappen 	Red Bull-Renault 	1m33.061s 29 
5  Sebastian Vettel 	Ferrari 		1m33.103s 34 
6  Sergio Perez 	Force India-Mercedes 	1m33.570s 37 
7  Nico Hulkenberg 	Force India-Mercedes 	1m33.873s 35 
8  Fernando Alonso 	McLaren-Honda 		1m33.985s 37 
9  Valtteri Bottas 	Williams-Mercedes 	1m34.028s 33 
10 Carlos Sainz 	Toro Rosso-Ferrari 	1m34.086s 33 
11 Felipe Massa 	Williams-Mercedes 	1m34.127s 33 
12 Daniel Ricciardo 	Red Bull-Renault 	1m34.150s 29 
13 Romain Grosjean 	Haas-Ferrari 		1m34.241s 33 
14 Daniil Kvyat 	Toro Rosso-Ferrari 	1m34.305s 27 
15 Kevin Magnussen 	Renault 		1m34.339s 36 
16 Jenson Button 	McLaren-Honda 		1m34.398s 29 
17 Esteban Gutierrez 	Haas-Ferrari 		1m34.643s 11 
18 Jolyon Palmer 	Renault 		1m34.760s 40 
19 Felipe Nasr 		Sauber-Ferrari 		1m34.824s 26 
20 Pascal Wehrlein 	Manor-Mercedes 		1m35.292s 30 
21 Esteban Ocon 	Manor-Mercedes 		1m35.400s 37 
22 Marcus Ericsson 	Sauber-Ferrari 		1m36.318s 26