Team encouraged by Nakano's efforts

Monitron was not entirely happy with Nakano's performance, but tempered this with the realisation that they need to make sure of a good qualifying and race set-up: "Today I'm not completely satisfied as I think Shinya could have made a bigger step forward this afternoon, but with the new tyre regulations we must save our best tyre for tomorrow."

"In the morning our situation was better as Shinya was fast and consistent, but this afternoon as other people made big improvements our improvement was not as large, but Shinya was still able to make his best time towards the end.

"We know we have to work hard to find a good setting for tomorrow and we are sure that Shinya can make a good qualifying time, we just also need to try and be consistent during the full race distance, so we hope that any improvements we make will help Shinya's overall race rhythm."

Nakano spent the day trying to make the best choice of tyres for the rest of the weekend's running.

Despite not impressing his boss as much as he may have hoped, Nakano is confident for tomorrow's qualifying session: "Today was quite good in the morning, although the afternoon session was even warmer so this made it difficult to choose our tyres.

"Tyre choice will be critical here and we may need to use a harder tyre than we first thought. Today we chose two tyres that we will use tomorrow and compare their performance.

"The nature of Motegi means that both tyre and suspension settings are key to a good lap time, so we will be working hard to find the right combination. I'm confident for qualifying tomorrow, although as we've seen today it's going to be very close indeed!"