Opening practice of new Super Formula season cancelled

A 90-minute session had been planned for Friday, starting at 1.40pm local time, ahead of Saturday's opening race of 2023 campaign.

However, persistent rain at Fuji has prompted the decision to call off the session.

While the conditions were not considered too poor to run, it's understood that the majority of teams did not want to risk damage to the cars for what would have been a largely meaningless session.

That's because the weather forecast for both Saturday and Sunday is for dry conditions.

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The practice session will not be rescheduled, with qualifying for the first race set to take place on Saturday morning at 9.20am.

Instead of the usual knockout format, qualifying will be held as a single 45-minute session, with the start time unchanged.

The cancellation of practice means that all 22 drivers in the Super Formula field will be going into qualifying with no experience of the new SF23 package at Fuji.

Series organiser JRP made the decision to cut down to a single pre-season test for the 2023 season in order to ease a congested schedule. This was held at Suzuka in early March.