Japanese Grand Prix: Yuki Tsunoda Sesto in the first practice with Lando Norris faster

Tsunoda had some angular moments while he was familiar with his new car. He ran on the sidewalk to Degner, twice had a moment of oversteer to the fork, and then a large oscillation from the last chicane.

But he kept the car on the track and showed a mature approach in the piloting cabin to get to deal with a car that is renowned for his difficult behavior.

When his engineer told him at some point that it was about 0.3 seconds behind Russell, Tsunoda replied: “Let’s focus on ourselves. I don’t need much reference time”.

At the end of the session, he said to his engineer: “I found the car interesting on the track. Good” Sesh “.”

Norris made a couple of errors during his first race on the medium rubber and his opening round on the soft rubber was ruined by an error at the chicane.

The car bounced on the sidewalk to the second peak of the Chicane, who launched the car in an oversteer and Norris slipped into the gravel.

But after a tour of refreshing the tires and reloading the hybrid battery, Norris laid the reference time, moving the impressive Russell from the top of the times.

Norris’ Oscar Plastri did not manage a representative time on the soft rubber and finished the fastest 15th.

Although the third and fourth faster, Ferrari were a piece out of the rhythm – Leclerc was 0.416 seconds slower than Norris, with Hamilton 0.086 seconds off his teammate.

Verstappen was 0.516 seconds slower than Norris, complaining at the beginning of the fact that the car felt “Super-Weynd” and “just flexing a lot”, and Alonso was only 0.05 seconds slower of Tsunoda in a second half well packaged of the Top 10.

Isak Hadjar in the racing bull was 0.003 seconds behind Alonso, while Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes was ninth in front of the Williams of Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon.

Antonelli and Albon had both almost identical to bobby pins, blocking the external front tires and sliding in the gravel before joining the track.

Lawson, relegated by Red Bull because they heard that his trust had disappeared and would not recover after a first two difficult races, was 13th on his return to the racing bulls, 0.311 seconds from Hadjar.