Lando Noris pitted Oscar Piastri to the top spot in the final practice at the Japanese Grand Prix after two red flags of grass fire reduced track time.
Norris left the best lap late and set the benchmark at 1M 27.965 on the fifth lap of his run on soft compound tires.
The British failed his first attempt to set time on the same set of tires by running wide on the Degner 2, urging him to abandon the lap.
The championship leader had set up a purple first division before lifting. He left about 0.025 at the table in that sector on his fastest lap later in the session.
Piastri was 0.026 seconds slower than Norris, but George Russell continued to threaten McLaren’s monopoly, leaving his fastest lap far from the top spot at just 0.112 seconds.
The running was significantly smoother with FP3 than the much-confused FP2 on Friday afternoon, but two grass fires booked an hour and stopped the session for a total of 15 minutes.
The second fire appeared in the 130th race, where Sauber rookie Gabriel Boltreto placed two wheels on the grass and fenced almost at high speed. The Brazilian saved the snap, but appeared to cause a small flame that forced the watch to abandon the session with seven minutes remaining.
It has been paced and ordered by Charles Leclerc in fourth and Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton in sixth place, 0.449S and 0.559S respectively.
They pinched Max Burstappen, who was unhappy with the changing balance of his Red Bull racing car.
“It’s all over the store,” he said on the radio. “In some corners, that’s not bad, but it’s not free again.”
Alex Albon was the second Red Bull racing car, finishing in seventh for Williams ahead of Alpine Pierre Guthrie and Yuki Tsunoda. Japan’s favorites were Verstappen on hard tires and a close match after being separated by just 0.1 seconds after their first qualifying run at Softs, but a second-half attempt from Dutchman expanded the margin to 0.288 seconds.
Isack Hadjar completed the 10 Racing Bulls ahead of Carlos Sainz and Liam Lawson.
Mercedes rookie Andrea Chimian Tonelli remained away from the pace of his teammates, who were 13th and beat 1.161 at a pace.
Jacques Duhan completed his first full session of the weekend on the 14th, with Australia returning to the fully rebuilt alpine cockpit after crashing on Turn 1 early in FP2 on Friday.
Doohan was first on track when the pit lane opened, but only 15 laps of the minimum mileage the driver in the session completed after putting on a 15-hour spell in the garage midway through the session.
Fernando Alonso ranked 15th over Oliver Baerman, Gabriel Boltreto, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll and Nico Halkenberg.
