F1 Japanese GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP3 & Qualifying
Saturday's action from the 16th round of the 2023 Formula 1 season
Live AppleTV Race Audio
Max Verstappen was utterly dominant on Friday at Suzuka, topping both sessions as Red Bull hunts its sixth constructors' title.
Behind the Dutchman, there was little to separate Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, while Mercedes has yet to show its Singapore pace that had the team in race-winning contention just one week ago.
A small toot from an air horn welcomes Verstappen exiting the pits for his first lap in this session. What happened to air horns? I don't have an F1 memory from the 1990s that isn't soundtracked by one of those.
Stroll is told to stay in his car at the end of Q1 in case others ahead of him get lap times deleted which push him into the top 15. I think that is more in hope than expectation given he'll need two drivers to be knocked out.
That's the third consecutive race Stroll has been knocked out of qualifying in Q1. Elsewhere, Zhou has blamed traffic and being impeded on his lap that was subsequently deleted for track limits.
Verstappen, Norris and the Ferrari pair are staying put in the pits, confident of their Q2 spots. The rest will fight it out on the track for the final timed laps.
There is a flood of traffic at pitlane exit, but all the drivers are coming out so slowly to build a gap to the car ahead. This might get a bit messy with 2m20s of Q1 to go.
An incident involving Leclerc, Zhou and Bottas has been noted by race control for failing to follow the maximum lap time rule in place for qualifying. That came up in Monza for the Ferrari pair but they avoided a penalty on that occasion.
While that was all going on, Hulkenberg and Albon both had lap times deleted for track limit infringements, while Leclerc, Sainz, Bottas and Gasly also have no lap time to their name as the red flag denied them.
Since the summer break Sargeant's picked up a bad habit of crashing at crucial moments. Qualifying in the Netherlands and now Japan, plus in the race in Singapore.
Replays reveal Sargeant briefly lost control of his Williams trying to get on the power out of the final corner and that pushed him onto the grass, putting him on a one-way ticket to the barrier.
The American is all OK and hops out unaided from his Williams. But there are some distraught faces in the garage as the mechanics face up to a long and significant rebuild ahead of Sunday's race.
Verstappen punches in a 1m29.878s, going quickest in the second and third sectors, while Norris holds the honours in sector one - just as he did in FP3.
Verstappen, on softs, sets off for his first timed lap in Q1. Now we have 18 drivers on the track with only the early runners Lawson and Stroll in the pits.
Suzuka is absolutely packed with fans and as you'd expect the weird and wonderful have been on show. There really is nothing like the Japanese F1 fans.
The soft tyres appear to be degrading very quickly on a hot Suzuka track, so getting that first timed lap nailed will be vital. The track temperature is creeping up to nearly 40C and the air temp is 27.4C, but the humidity has dropped significantly from Friday.
A sign of Verstappen's confidence going into qualifying is that he takes just three sets of softs into the session while the majority of his rivals have four or five sets. Could he try to get through Q1 on the mediums or is it a one and done plan for Q3?
Perez was fourth in FP3 but still trailed Verstappen by 0.737s which is a pretty big margin. Not the full second it was on Friday, but probably too much to close in qualifying. Then came the pair of Ferraris and duo of Mercs.
Back to qualifying. Final practice saw a surge from McLaren who appeared to find serious overnight gains. It wasn't enough to knock off Verstappen from top spot, but Norris and Piastri moved within three-tenths of the Dutch driver.
If you are just waking up in Europe - where have you been! You've got some pre-qualifying reading to catch up on, starting with the recap on final practice below.
