Everything that happened in final Japanese GP F1 practice

Max Verstappen beat the Ferraris by three tenths of a second in the first dry running of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend at Suzuka.

Key moments

> Verstappen sets immediate rapid pace
> Ferraris on top in middle of session
> But Verstappen 0.294s clear in the end
> Session fully dry after Friday rain

After Friday’s washout, the dry but windy conditions of Saturday gave teams chance to do more meaningful work and led to divergent approaches.

Red Bull went straight out on softs, with Verstappen immediately putting in a 1m32.050s that was 1.186s faster than team-mate Sergio Perez at the same time, while most of the rest began with longer runs and harder tyre compounds.

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Ferrari did an initial soft-tyre run in the middle of the session and went quickest – Carlos Sainz doing a 1m30.965s and Charles Leclerc a 1m31.388s. Verstappen then got between them on medium tyres.

Sainz couldn’t improve when all the frontrunners did final qualifying-style runs on soft tyres at the end, and Leclerc could only get to within 0.015s of his team-mate.

But Verstappen made a bigger leap when he returned to softs and put in a 1m30.671s to go clear of both Sainz and Leclerc.

Perez had heavy traffic on his last run and was only fifth, 0.843s off Verstappen.

Fernando Alonso was an impressive fourth for Alpine, while the two Mercedes completed the top seven behind Perez.

Hours after his 2023 move to Alpine was announced, Pierre Gasly was a surprise slowest driver in final practice – three places behind team-mate Yuki Tsunoda as AlphaTauri tumbled down the order in the traffic of the late qualifying simulations.

Practice 3 Results