Norris completes McLaren practice sweep in Japan as grass fires again disrupt running

Lando Norris pipped Oscar Piastri to top spot in final practice at the Japanese Grand Prix after two red flags for grass fires curtailed track time.

Norris left his best lap until late, setting the benchmark at 1m 27.965s on the fifth lap of his run with the soft-compound tire.

The Briton had botched his first attempt to set a time on that same set of tires by running wide at Degner 2, prompting him to abandon the lap.

The championship leader had set a purple first sector before lifting; he left around 0.025s on the table in that sector on his fastest lap later in the session.

Piastri was 0.026s slower than Norris, while George Russell continued to threaten the McLaren monopoly with a fastest lap just 0.112s off top spot.

While running was significantly smoother in FP3 than in the severely disrupted FP2 of Friday afternoon, two grass fires bookended the hour, suspending the session for around 15 minutes in total.

The second fire appeared at 130R, where Sauber rookie Gabriel Bortoleto put two wheels on the grass and almost put himself at high speed into the fence. The Brazilian saved the snap, but it appeared to trigger the small blaze that forced race control to abandon the session with seven minutes remaining on the clock.

It fixed the order with Charles Leclerc in fourth and Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton in sixth, 0.449s and 0.559s off the pace respectively.

They sandwiched Max Verstappen, who remains unhappy about the shifting balance of his Red Bull Racing car.

“It’s all over the shop,” he radioed. “In some corners it’s not bad, but then it becomes undrivable again.”

Alex Albon was seventh for Williams ahead of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda in the second Red Bull Racing car. The Japanese favorite had been a close match for Verstappen on the hard tire and after their first qualifying runs on softs, when they were separated by just 0.1s, but a late second attempt from the Dutchman widened the margin to 0.288s.

Isack Hadjar completed the 10 for Racing Bulls ahead of Carlos Sainz and Liam Lawson.

Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli remained off the pace of his frontrunning teammate down in 13th and 1.161s off the pace.

Jack Doohan completed his first full session of the weekend in 14th, the Australian returning to the cockpit of his totally rebuilt Alpine car after his crash at Turn 1 early in FP2 on Friday.

Doohan was first out on track when pit lane opened but completed only 15 laps, among the least mileage completed by any driver in the session after a quarter-hour spell in his garage in the middle of the session.

Fernando Alonso was 15th ahead of Oliver Bearman, Gabriel Bortoleto, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg.