http://weather.msn.com/tenday.aspx?wealoca...forecast:tenday

As It Stands now there is a 90% chance of rain on the Friday.

Is this from the same forecaster who predicted rain for Singapore?

Well the forecast is for the day, not for race time.

At this point, believing in forecast models for an event which is well over a week away is useless. Wait until the middle of next week for any remotely accurate forecasts.

I will give a shout for the weather bods. They usually get their predictions pretty close. Whenever they have said rain so far this season, we hav had rain. It is the timing of the rain that is difficult to predict.

Most of the teams had their own people scanning for weather systems at Monza and they still got wrong when a storm system changed direction less than ten minutes away from the circuit.

I think that we should expect rain in Japan though. It is hardly surprising that rain is probable in that part of the world at this time of the year is it?

...it seems as though it's always overcast and/or raining there.

Btw, the fuji race isn't near the town of fuji, it is in the town of Oyama.

10 day

Ohh cheers, looks to have very similar weather!!

yesterday i looked at the gotemba forecast (as looking back,thats about 2 miles from the track) and it said dry all 3 days,today fri and sat are meant to be wet......tomorrow it'll probably change again.......wont get it even remotely close to being accurate before monday

keep posting.
i fly in on thursday morning.
am bringing serious raincoat just in case,
and of course, being japan,
a very good umbrella.

What is the point looking at weather forecasts 9 days before GP? Those moron forecasters usually get nextdays weather wrong

Yeah, now there's a 5% chance of rain on the Friday.....

Well if they forecast not stop sunshine then there is a good chance it won't rain! However if they are giving rain ~7-8 days out then you might as well ignore it as they can't be accurate.

And now to ignore my own advice- Dry friday/sat with AM showers on sunday with a high of 23 on saturday and 16 on sunday.
So a Ferrari type track with conditions suited to Mclaren.

And back up to 80% on the Sunday LOL

Dry: Hamilton, Massa, Kimi.
Wet: Hamilton, Vettel, Webber

Regardless of the likelyhood of rain, the track temps are going to be low.

i hear there's a typhoon heading towards Hong Kong.............this is sure to affect the rest of the week isn't it.
well fuji was wet last year, and china the last 2, so just the usual really.

Back down to 40.

Seriously.....

or heavy rain in 5 mins.....or not

thing is you guys are basing your 40%,80% etc on 1 website..........looking at just 1 website wont even get close to giving you any sort of accurate idea as to the weather,you need to look at a few of them-if theyre all saying roughly the same forecast for a few days in a row,then its likely to be accurate,but just looking at 1 website and it changing all the time wont give you any idea as to the actual weather coming up

If it doesn't rain in Fuji, we will see an extremely dull race on a track that couldn't hold the candle to the likes of Suzuka.

The circuit might surprise you. The final corner is slow and wide, with potentially multiple racing lines, leading onto the longest straight in F1.

Suzuka has a great layout, but doesn't really provide great racing. As karlth just said, Fuji has a slow last section which should help the cars close up before the long pit straight.

Well, hope we will get a great race nevertheless.

Very interesting for Saturday and Sunday at moment.

If there was a 90% chance on the saturday would that mean there is 3.75% chance of wet qualifying?

I don't know why people use the forecast for fuji when the nearest city as far as i remember is Gotemba, about 5km from the speedway. I have been on mt fuji through the trail at gotemba and i can tell you that to forecast weather in this area over a few days is quite difficult. Gotemba lies just below mt. fuji, an excellent beautiful place which i have fond memories of since 2003. I wouldn't waste my time looking for forecast because like spa the weather can be very localized and only maybe one day b4 can be accurate. Hope this makes sense.

absolutely correct,went back to last years forecasts on here to check if there was an area thats close and on the same level as the track,and gotemba is barely 2-3km from the track,so takes into account the height,whereas fuji forecasts can easily just mean mount fuji forecasts,gotemba is definitely the place you should focus your forecasts on

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?world=2723&links

BBC predicting warm, dry and sunny qualifying and a cooler dry race.

So we'll have a very wet Fuji F1 race ('07) followed by a dry one, just as in '76 and '77. Let's hope they have a safer race than they did in '77 (two spectators were killed).

I'm not sure If this track If the weather is dry can provide us with an exciting race as it has very long straights which will give the fastest cars an advantage. I prefer a wet race, success is guaranteed!

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/week/327.html

Looks like a reliable source to me. It's for the whole prefecture though. From what i see there the forecasts are indicating a rain possibility again, but it will only become more precise on Friday. So, stay tuned and look forward to an exciting weekend.

Thats 100km away. Current prediction is for dry in both, with a slight chance of rain during qualifying.

Really? What a bunch of idiots. Last time I use BBC for F1 weather.

NEVER use bbc for ANY weather,because its vague as to where it says it might rain (even if it says milan,you dont know where in milan) it doesnt give an idea as to what time of day it might rain,nor the % chance of it raining at any point

Right. Everyone's basically decided on the Sunday forecast. However, a lot of forecasts are moving towards a totally wet Saturday heading into midday.

http://www.formula1.com/races/in_detail/ja...it_diagram.html --> Qualifying starts 14:00 local time.

Weather.com goes with the "60% AM Rain" factor, with
them forecasting rain up until 13:00 local time. MSN.com goes with similar weather.

However, the GPS models are struggling to work out the severity of the rain. Autosport.com Weather Live lastest prediction notes:



This obviously (if it happened) will mean a wet qualifying session which could keep teams on their toes. Temperatures are only expected to peak Saturday at 20 degrees, meaning that any drying process will be slow.

So, a wet qualifying could (I stress the word COULD) be on the cards.

looking at the rainmaps,theres a big band of rain heading west towards the area where the track is,which may or may not hit,but if it is wet,what do the drivers do in terms of setup if sunday is meant to be dry...........interesting

This is starting to look like a reversal of every race forecast: "It's gonna rain for sure, rain is very likely, it will probably rain, we could have a bit of rain, there's an outside chance of rain", and finally we get no rain.

Now it is "it won't rain, well it will rain on Friday evening, it will rain before Saturday practice, it could rain for several hours..."

Any thoughts on the cold temperatures and how that will swing things for either team?

I know Macca like cooler temperatures, but don't they lose something if the temperatures that are too low?

After Monza, they'd be just as well to look up at the sky...

it's sunny and dry now in Tokyo (living here), though very cold. I expect Shizuoka to be just as dry, but a bit cooler

according to gt5p its 14 degrees celsius at the Fuji track right now.

It seems all our predictions were wrong! The track is a bit dull, but it can provide a good race as it is possible to overtake.