Max Verstappen's headline times in both of Friday's Formula 1 practice sessions at the Japanese Grand Prix proved that Red Bull's misfortune in Singapore was a mere blip.
The championship leader atoned for a difficult weekend at the Marina Bay Circuit last time out by stamping his authority on FP1, capturing a 1m31.647s to sit above Singapore winner Carlos Sainz by 0.6s as Ferrari continued its recent resurgence with the runner-up spot in the noon-time session.
He proceeded to claim FP2 over the other Ferrari in the afternoon, outpacing Charles Leclerc by the smaller margin of 0.3s with a 1m30.688s while Lando Norris sat in the top three of both sessions to demonstrate McLaren's credentials as a podium contender at Suzuka.
Verstappen's efforts were in stark contrast to those of his team-mate Sergio Perez, who languished down the order relative to his team-mate having been more than a second behind in both sessions.
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Lewis Hamilton had predicted that Red Bull would be strong before any of the cars had turned a wheel, suggesting Verstappen should win Sunday's race by over 30 seconds and lauded the RB19's characteristics around a circuit such as Suzuka. The seven-time champion's early assessment appears to have been proven correct, owing to Verstappen's evident advantage through the first practice sessions.
Verstappen fitted the softs at the end of FP1 to fly to the top of the charts and then picked up from where he left off at the start of FP2 to hit the top with a new set of soft tyres. Although his first run of FP2 was eclipsed by Norris and then Leclerc, Verstappen hit back after the opening half-hour to clock the first time in the 1m30s of the weekend prior to the teams' long-run simulations that usually close out the second practice session.
At the close of that session both Ferraris were classified in the top four, as Leclerc's earlier table-topper was good enough for second while Sainz fell just over two tenths short of his team-mate. Norris split the two Ferraris, having found stronger pace in the first sector relative to the two SF-23s in his McLaren. Although the next best relative to Verstappen in the opening sector, Norris's time in the first split was still 0.3s down on the Red Bull driver.
Source: Autosport