Join now and get your first month for just $1 ><\/a><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Italian Antonelli, who won the first grand prix of his career in China two weeks ago, was second, 0.092sec behind Piastri.<\/p>\n
Early championship leader Russell, who was fastest in the morning practice ahead of Antonelli, was third. <\/p>\n
Follow Foxsports.com.au\u2019s live coverage of FP3 in the blog below!<\/p>\n
Piastri has endured a nightmare start to the season, crashing on his way to the grid at the opener in Australia and failing to start the grand prix in China because of a technical problem.<\/p>\n
He hailed a \u201cdecent day\u201d in Japan, with McLaren teammate and world champion Lando Norris clocking the fourth-fastest time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt like we made some good progress, particularly in the second practice session, which was encouraging,\u201d said Piastri.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe feeling is positive and we\u2019ve gathered some valuable data that puts us in a solid position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercedes have established themselves as the team to beat so far this season, claiming a one-two finish in both grands prix to date.<\/p>\n
They were again out in front in the morning practice session when Russell led Antonelli to top the timesheets ahead of Norris and Piastri.<\/p>\n
Piastri got the better of both Silver Arrows in the afternoon and Russell admitted the McLarens\u2019 pace was \u201ca little bit of a surprise\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see why it wouldn\u2019t be genuine, to be honest,\u201d said Russell, who was 0.205sec slower than Piastri.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Lando\u2019s had a disruptive day but Oscar has been pretty on it from the first lap out of the box this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norris ended the practice session strongly after sitting out the first half because of a hydraulic leak.<\/p>\n
The British driver, who did not start the Chinese Grand Prix because of a separate technical issue to Piastri, also missed half of the morning practice.<\/p>\n
Norris called it \u201ca tricky day\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAround a track like this you just want laps to build confidence and refine the set-up, and right now we\u2019re two or three steps behind with no long runs and very limited consecutive running,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
FP3 at the Japanese Grand Prix commences on Saturday at 1.30pm AEDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri powered to the fastest time in Friday\u2019s second practice for the Japanese Grand Prix, usurping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-569131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}