The Fuji round of the World Endurance Championship has been suspended after just eight laps behind the safety car.
The red flags were brought out on lap eight when rain intensified. The cars have stopped in parc ferme conditions on the start-finish straight and the clock is still running.
It is hoped that the rain will ease sometime around 1pm local time (5am BST) to allow the race to be restarted.
The decision was deemed to be the correct one by the drivers.
Audi driver Andre Lotterer, who leads the race, said: “We thought we would give it a try for a few laps, but then it started raining too much again. So far this is the right decision.”
James Walker, who started the second G-Drive/Delta-ADR ORECA-Nissan LMP2, explained that the conditions made it difficult to drive behind the safety car.
“There’s no way we could race in that,” he said. “There was standing water around the whole track and visibility was down to 20 or 30 metres on the start-finish straight.”
Lotterer was at the front when the red flags came out, aboard the Audi R18 e-tron he qualified on pole together with Benoit Treluyer.
Second place is held Kazuki Nakajima in the best of the Toyota TS030 HYBRIDs.
The second Toyota was down in 27th position in Anthony Davidson’s hands after the car failed to leave the pitlane in time during the race build-up.
The car is one lap down on its LMP1 rivals because Davidson was not allowed to join the race until the second lap, as per WEC rules.
