With the weight of a nation on his shoulders and under the most intense scrutiny of his career, Yuki Tsunoda delivered with no little finesse in practice for the Japanese Grand Prix in his first outing for Red Bull. Lando Norris, meanwhile, appears well set to further advance his world championship ambitions, with a strong showing here for McLaren, despite a second session interrupted by no fewer than four red flags, two caused by trackside fires.
Tsunoda was drafted in from the sister team, Racing Bulls, only last week to replace Liam Lawson, whom the team unceremoniously demoted after just two races. The 24-year-old has four seasons in F1 under his belt but has never driven this year’s Red Bull before and it is a hard car to handle, as Lawson discovered.
Max Verstappen has been clear it is unstable and lacks balance even in his world champion hands and Lawson crashed out in the season-opener in Australia then qualified last for both the sprint and the GP in China, finishing in 12th in the latter at Shanghai.
The more experienced Tsunoda, however, demonstrated he was immediately able to begin to get to grips with the car. He finished sixth in free practice one and crucially was only one tenth off the time set by Verstappen, who was fifth, far closer than Lawson had managed in any session and the sort of performance Red Bull need from their second driver. Lawson was 13th in the more compliant Racing Bull, five places back from his teammate Isack Hadjar.
The field was led by Norris at a circuit also very much suited to the strengths of the McLaren. He leads the championship from Verstappen by eight points, a margin he will be looking to extend in Japan.
Norris finished the first session more than 0.15sec up on Mercedes’ George Russell, despite a somewhat scrappy opening as he looked to find the limit, including nearly spinning and a brief off. Ferrari, too, enjoyed the high-speed challenge of the figure-of-eight circuit, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in third and fourth.
The second session was quickly interrupted by a red flag, when Jack Doohan suffered a huge accident in his Alpine, spinning out of control on the way into turn one and taking a massive impact in the barriers. He emerged unhurt but his car was wrecked and it appeared his DRS device had not closed as he turned in, causing the spin. After a 30-minute delay, the cars returned to the track but only briefly as Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin put a wheel wide at the Degner curve and also spun off into the gravel, prompting another red flag.
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With only 20 minutes left, running resumed in time for a quick burst on the soft tyres, with Norris going quickest once more only for the session to be stopped for a third time when the grass on the run to Degner caught fire, apparently ignited by the sparks from the skid planks. The blaze was extinguished but with only seven minutes remaining, during which Oscar Piastri claimed the top spot from Norris to make it a McLaren one-two by four hundredths of a second.
The Red Bull still looked an absolute handful to drive, however, with Verstappen in eighth and Tsunoda, who did not complete a quick lap on the soft tyres, in 18th, before the session was finally put out of its misery when a second fire erupted trackside.