Max Verstappen made it a practice clean sweep as he topped the timesheets during the final hour of running in Japan before qualifying later today. The Dutch driver lead the way ahead of the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

After a busy first day in Suzuka, the teams returned on Saturday looking to finalise their setups ahead of qualifying. But the drivers were in no rush to get going in FP3, with only Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc out on track in the first 10 minutes.

But one by one the drivers began to file out onto the track with most opting to run the soft tyre. And after the first 20 minutes, it was Verstappen who held the benchmark time, with a lap of 1m 30.960s, to lead Norris by just 0.214s.

Piastri showed a good turn of pace on his flying lap to go third fastest, just 0.048s off his McLaren team mate, while Sergio Perez was fourth in the other Red Bull – although he was 0.737s off Verstappen’s pace-setting time.

To go to fourth, Perez jumped ahead of both Ferrari drivers, with Leclerc and Sainz ending up fifth and sixth, respectively. The Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell followed them – with both drivers looking more comfortable today after what Hamilton described as a “tough” Friday.