The Latest Breaking News from Japanese GP

Francesco Bagnaia took a six-point bite out of Jorge Martin’s MotoGP points advantage as he led a 1-2 for the factory Ducati team in the Japanese GP sprint race on Saturday.

Ducati has won the last two editions of the Japanese GP, with then-factory rider Jack Miller triumphing in 2022 and Jorge Martin taking the top spot last year for Pramac.

But teams and drivers are already bracing themselves for what could be a game of patiently follow-the-leader thanks to the growing dirty air problem that F1 is experiencing right now.

Drivers revel in the venue for Sunday’s Japanese GP, a circuit that is the perfect combination of risk and reward, where the bold and exacting shine

Verstappen will start ahead of team-mate Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Lando Norris after the one-hour qualifying session, which is split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3. 

The F1 world champion led a Red Bull 1-2 in opening practice which was red-flagged midway through as Logan Sargeant crashed heavily, which ruled him out of FP2 as his Williams car was repaired.But the American driver missed relatively little running as damp conditions meant no representative running in the…

Max Verstappen set the pace for Red Bull in FP1, which was the only representative session on Friday, as he posted a time of 1m30.056s in his RB20.

Verstappen was fastest in Free Practice 1, lapping in 1m30.056s, while FP2 was blighted by rain showers. That was topped by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, with a quickest time of 1m34.725s.

Rain started sporadically falling in the paddock with under an hour to go ahead of FP2’s 3pm local time commencement, but this intensified with 15 minutes to go.