McLarens on top after incident-filled day

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris topped the times for McLaren as four red flags, two caused by track-side grass fires, wreaked havoc with the second practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix yesterday.

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Australian Piastri, the winner of the last race in China, squeezed in a lap of one minute, 28.114 seconds between the last two red flags to take the honours on a sunny but cool day at the Suzuka circuit.

Championship leader Norris was fastest in first practice and second in the later session, some fourth tenths of a second ahead of Racing Bulls' French rookie Isack Hadjar.

The level of disruption in the second session meant several drivers were unable to get out for extended runs, leaving plenty for them and their teams to figure out in the final practice before qualifying today.

"It's been a bit of an up-and-down day but there's definitely been positives in there," said Piastri.

"FP2 was a pretty stop-start session which made it tricky to go through everything, but there were still some good learnings. A couple of tweaks and we'll be good to go."