F1: Verstappen tops final practice for Japanese GP

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen turned a lap of 1m30.671s on his final run in Practice 3 for the Japanese GP at Suzuka.

That lap was enough to beat the two Ferraris of Carlos Sainz jr. by 0.294s and Charles Leclerc by 0.309s.

Fernando Alonso was an excellent 4th, 0.649s behind Verstappen while Sergio Perez rounded out the top-5 in the 2nd Red Bull Honda.

With drivers and teams pushing to gather as much data as possible, a variety of short and long runs – using a combination of Pirelli’s soft, medium and hard rubber – were carried out across the 60-minute session.

George Russell led Mercedes’s charge in sixth position, half a tenth up on teammate Lewis Hamilton, though had a scare into the Turn 11 hairpin late on as he “almost crashed into” the slow-moving Pierre Gasly.

Mick Schumacher, who crashed on an in-lap in FP1 to miss the entirety of FP2 owing to a chassis change, followed Haas team-mate Kevin Magnussen home in 16th.

Practice 3 Results