The Russian came over the team radio in FP1 at Suzuka to say: "Oh no, the octopus is back. It's quite a small one – a baby octopus."

His comments caused confusion among fans, until it was later explained that he was referring to the way that small pieces of rubber wrapped around a car antenna can appear to grow legs when the car runs at speed.

It first happened to him at the 2014 Chinese Grand Prix, when the rubber 'tentacles' started interfering with his helmet.

In the wake of the social media fascination that the remarks caused, Kvyat said: "Apparently it became popular….it started in China in 2014 my first year with the team.

"During the race there was a big octopus. Today was a small one, but I think some pieces of some rubber can fly and build up around the antenna.

"In China it was almost hitting my visor so I was really struggling. I was fighting it. But the one today was small – a baby one – so just born.

"I said to the team: 'do you remember?' Already then it was funny, but today it was also funny. But it must have been so weird on the radio."

He added: "At the lunch break, the team told me [the octopus comment] went quite big! It was just a joke for my group of engineers, but apparently it went around the world."

Promising day

Despite the octopus incident, Kvyat said the rest of his day had been encouraging.

"It was a good day. It was decent. I think P1 was good, and straight away I felt quite decent in the car. Then we had a little issue between the sessions because we had to compromise a bit of the setup work for P2, but it still felt quite decent.

"We ticked all our boxes, did a good long run, so we are basically ready. We will try to find bits and pieces of driving and car setup to try to optimise everything for tomorrow but we never know tomorrow what the weather will do. It might become quite interesting."

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