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The 19-lap event featured three safety car periods and was characterised by the drivers opting to use soft tyres making big gains early on and the safety car restarts, before falling back as the race wore on with their rubber graining.

The 19-lap event featured three safety car periods and was characterised by the drivers opting to use soft tyres making big gains early on and the safety car restarts, before falling back as the race wore on with their rubber graining.

Verstappen bolted on the soft tyres in the final part of the session to leapfrog long-time session leader Fernando Alonso, setting a 1m27.428s. T

Verstappen bolted on the soft tyres in the final part of the session to leapfrog long-time session leader Fernando Alonso, setting a 1m27.428s. The championship leader - who can sew up the title in Saturday's sprint race - then saw off an initial attempt from Charles Leclerc as the Monegasque…

The championship leader routed the rest of the field with his initial 1m29.012s, which would have been good enough for pole on its own, but a second lap yielded further improvements and he found over a tenth to secure a 1m28.877s.

A slow-burning session, which featured no track action for the opening five minutes, ended with a series of qualifying simulations in which Verstappen set a 1m30.267s lap to eclipse the two McLarens - which had found performance relative to the Red Bull driver overnight.

A slow-burning session, which featured no track action for the opening five minutes, ended with a series of qualifying simulations in which Verstappen set a 1m30.267s lap to eclipse the two McLarens - which had found performance relative to the Red Bull driver overnight.

Max Verstappen's headline times in both of Friday's Formula 1 practice sessions at the Japanese Grand Prix proved that Red Bull's misfortune in Singapore was a mere blip.

After losing his record F1 wins streak and Red Bull’s 100% victory run in 2023, Verstappen bounced back by topping both Friday practice sessions, going quickest in FP2 by 0.320s from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. 

The Dutchman punched in a 1m30.688s to stand atop the timing boards, having been bumped off the top following his opening run on soft tyres as the rest of the front-running pack waited until later in the session to clock their first times on softs.

Nearly a week on from Red Bull’s humbling in Singapore, Verstappen utterly dominated the early stages, heading the times from his first flier, a 1m33.719s set on the hard tyres that no one else could get anywhere near as the pack was split across the harder tyre compounds.