Lando Norris topped the first practice session for the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix, but Yuki Tsunoda had a decent start to his Red Bull Racing career.
Norris was fastest, 0.163s ahead of Mercedes George Russell who was second fastest while Ferrari's Charles Leclerc was third fastest, 0.253s further down the road.
Lewis Hamilton was fourth fastest in the sister Ferrari, the seven-time Formula 1 champion 0.086s behind his teammate.
Max Verstappen was fifth fastest for Red Bull, over half a second off the pace while new teammate Yuki Tsunoda was just one tenth behind him in sixth.
While it has been an encouraging start for Tsunoda, it would be too soon to decide whether he has been able to tame the RB21.
Being a guest on F1 TV, former Red Bull mechanic Calum Nicholas suggested that Red Bull may have been given Tsunoda a few extra horsepower to get used to how the RB21 will behave in qualifying.
Verstappen, on the other hand, never uses higher engine maps for one-lap runs on Friday. Could that explain the small gap?
Tsunoda admitted on the team radio after the session that it was messy and that his RB21 felt interesting...
Fernando Alonso was seventh fastest in the Aston Martin, with Isack Hadjar eighth in the Racing Bulls VCARB02.
Kimi Antonelli was ninth ahead of Carlos Sainz who was tenth and the faster of the Williams pair as the Spaniard reportedly had a new chassis this weekend. Alex Albon was eleventh.
Oscar Piastri was 15th fastest in the other McLaren, 1.159s off the pace of his teammate while Liam Lawson was 13th fastest on his first out with the Racing Bulls since his demotion.
Riyo Hirakawa who replaced Jack Doohan for FP1 at Alpine was a decent 12th while Pierre Gasly was 14th.
Buildup towards FP1
After a short break, action resumed at the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix which kicked off the first triple header of the season.
The big news naturally is the swap between Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda as all eyes will be on both of the them to see first how the latter performs in the RB21 and whether the former picks himself up and delivers in the VCARB02 which has proven to be a driver-friendly car so far.
More driver news, Ryo Hirakawa replaces Jack Doohan in FP1 at Alpine, and while it makes sense for the team to stick their Japanese reserve driver in the car in front of his home fans but oddly decided to deprive their rookie driver from the highly needed time in the car on a challenging circuit like Suzuka.
McLaren remain the team to beat while Ferrari need to pick their pieces after their disastrous double disqualification in the Chinese Grand Prix while Mercedes will be looking to continue maximizing their results.
As for Pirelli, they went on the hard side with their tyres with the C1 (Hard), C2 (Medium), and C3 (Soft) compounds available for the teams this weekend.
FP1 Session Highlights
The session started in clear but windy conditions with track temperatures at 35 degrees Celsius while air temperature was 14 degrees.
Red Bull, Racing Bulls, and Ferrari were soon out on track. The McLaren car had some flow vis on the front suspension.
Tsunoda had an early snap of oversteer while Verstappen had a moment riding the kerbs hard.
Both Red Bull drivers started on the Soft tyres as other teams opted for Mediums and Hards.
Hirakawa was asked for feedback in balance by his engineer; he reported: "Not bad." And then Red Bull asked Tsunoda was asked the same question, he responded it was ok but that he was not pushing yet.
Tsunoda soon was out of shape in the final corners, but soon pitted after that. Verstappen then reported a super weird thing on his car, that it was flexing.
Midway into the session, Tsunoda was given the gap to Russell who was leading the session at the time. The new Red Bull driver asked the team to focus on themselves... No need for reference times.
At that moment, the top five were: Russell - Leclerc - Verstappen - Tsunoda - Antonelli.
Norris had a gravel moment while on a fast lap on Softs in Turn 18 and had to abort the corner. As Albon also had an off road moment after locking up into the hairpin.
The Williams driver was passing Lawson who radioed that he was "well out of his way" when that happened.
Sainz reported that he did not like the sharpness of the front end of his car. He explained that the front end was better but he did not like it.
Leclerc, on the other hand, asked his team about the deceleration on his SF-25 as it felt bad. His engineer said it was ok and sited tail wind as the cause of the issue.
Norris was concerned about graining on his car while on Medium tyres on a long run and asked of any other drivers had the same issue. Russell was the answer...
Tsunoda reported that he tried engine braking but it was bad as he suffered from understeer. He was on a long run when he said that.
McLaren told Norris to push as they did not see any damage on the tyre. The driver was puzzled by that message repeating that his front tyres were obviously graining.
Antonelli soon had a moment, locking up into Turn 1 and ended up in the gravel. He was back on his way, no drama.
The session was concluded with practice starts.
Japanese Grand Prix FP1 Classification
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