F1 Practice Was A Total Mess With Huge Crash, Parts Of The Track Catching On Fire.

I was having some trouble sleeping on Thursday night into Friday morning and found myself awake at 1:30 in the morning. So, since I was up, I wandered downstairs to watch the second practice session of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend, and I'm kind of glad I did because it was downright bizarre.

The first practice of the weekend was relatively uneventful, aside from the fact that McLaren's Lando Norris topped the timesheet, and Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda had a great session in which he kept within a tenth of a second of his teammate Max Verstappen in a Red Bull that looks to be a bit of a shopping cart at times.

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But it was the late show — FP2 — where things got wild.

First, there was a horrific crash for Alpine rookie Jack Doohan, who appeared to spin out of nowhere at the very end of the pit straight and slammed into the wall on the outside of the first corner.

Doohan looked like he may have felt that one, but fortunately, he appears to be okay. His car? Not so much.

The team later said that the incident was the result of Doohan not hitting the DRS (Drag-Reduction System) button to close the flap in the rear wing, which would help slow the car down and create more downforce as he entered the braking zone for that corner.

You live and you learn.

However, it doesn't seem like F1 has learned that dry grass and titanium skid plates don't mix.

After a second red flag in which Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso went off and got stuck in the gravel on the outside of the notoriously tricky corner known as  Degner 2, we got a third red flag after some of the trackside grass caught on fire.

You know how sparks sometimes shoot out from behind F1 cars? That's from the titanium skid plates on the underside of the car making contact with the track surface at high speeds. Well, it was a windy day at Suzuka, and a few sparks were blown into some thirsty-looking grass.

If this sounds familiar, it's because this exact thing happened last season in Shanghai.

Another fire broke out toward the end of the session.

Unfortunately, with all of those red flags, the session was a bit of a write-off, with teams missing out on a lot of long-run data.

Still, McLaren looks to be the team to beat, with Mercedes showing some decent form and some surprise speed from Racing Bulls as well.