Yuki Tsunoda made a promising start to his Red Bull career in first practice at the Japanese Grand Prix. The Japanese, promoted to the senior team in a swap with Liam Lawson after just two races of the season, was sixth fastest, 0.107 seconds slower than his four-time world champion team-mate Max Verstappen. The Red Bulls were lagging more than 0.5 seconds behind the pace-setting McLaren of Lando Norris, who headed the times by 0.163secs from George Russell's Mercedes. Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were third and fourth, followed by Verstappen and Tsunoda and Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.
Tsunoda had a few edgy moments as he familiarised himself with his new car. He ran on to the kerb at Degner One, twice had an oversteer moment at the hairpin, and then a big wobble out of the final chicane. But he kept the car on track and displayed a mature approach in the cockpit to getting to grips with a car that is renowned for its tricky behaviour. When his engineer told him at one point that he was about 0.3secs behind Russell, Tsunoda replied: "Let's focus on ourselves. I don't need much reference time." At the end of the session, he told his engineer: "I found the car interesting on track. Good 'sesh'." Norris made a couple of mistakes on his first run on the medium tyre, and his opening lap on the soft tyre was ruined by an error at the chicane. The car bounced over the kerb at the second apex of the chicane, which flicked the car into an oversteer and Norris slid into the gravel. But after a lap to cool down his tyres and recharge his hybrid battery, Norris laid down the benchmark time, displacing the impressive Russell from the top of the times. Norris' team-mate Oscar Piastri did not manage a representative time on the soft tyre and ended up 15th fastest. Although third and fourth fastest, the Ferraris were a chunk off the pace - Leclerc was 0.416secs slower than Norris, with Hamilton 0.086secs off his team-mate. Verstappen was 0.516secs slower than Norris, complaining early on that the car felt "super-weird" and "just flexing a lot", and Alonso was just 0.05secs slower than Tsunoda in a tightly packed second half of the top 10. Isack Hadjar in the Racing Bull was 0.003secs behind Alonso, while Andrea Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes was ninth ahead of the Williams of Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon. Antonelli and Albon both had almost identical offs at the hairpin, locking up their outside front tyres and sliding into the gravel before joining the track.
Lawson, demoted by Red Bull because they felt his confidence had gone and would not recover after a difficult first two races, was 13th on his return to Racing Bulls, 0.311secs off Hadjar.
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