The Marussia F1 Team got their Japanese Grand Prix weekend underway today at Suzuka, with the first two practice sessions for Sunday's 53 lap race. Jules Bianchi ended the opening day of running in 20th position, while Max Chilton's best time placed him 21st, with both drivers focusing largely on set-up work to prepare for the potential for variable conditions from qualifying to race that may arise due to the advancing Typhoon Phanfone.

Jules Bianchi: "We lost a bit of time this morning because of a reliability issue, but aside from that we have had a reasonably positive start to our weekend. We have made some good progress with the car already, so I think we can improve a little more still, ahead of the race. I think there are some unknowns about the weekend yet, given the weather situation, but fingers crossed we can have a good race here. It's nice to be back here at Suzuka. It's such a great circuit."

Max Chilton: "Overall, it's been a good day for me. We improved the car with each run and by the end of the day we had a good compromise balance, with more time tomorrow to hone the car further. So I'm reasonably positive for the rest of the weekend. The main unknown is of course what the weather will bring, but we will continue with our planned programme and hope for the best."

John Booth, Team Principal: "Unfortunately this morning we had a couple of reliability issues that kept both cars in the garage a little longer than we would have hoped for, but overall we collected enough information to allow us to evaluate some of the set-up changes we had planned to make this weekend. Into FP2 we made more changes based on the results of FP1 and the drivers reported that they were reasonably happy with the car. As the weather looks like qualifying will be dry and the race wet, we opted to do a little more set-up work than usual in FP2 to achieve a compromise between the long runs and the focus for Sunday. The pace on the option tyre was maybe not quite as good as we expected, however going on to the higher fuel the car was a little more competitive, so we will evaluate the difference in this evening and hope to improve further for tomorrow."

Check out our Friday gallery, here.