Comfortably fastest in first practice by six tenths of a second on Friday morning, Verstappen again topped the timesheet in Practice Two with a 1:30.688.

But Ferrari's Charles Leclerc halved the world champion's advantage in the afternoon, ending up 0.320s off the Red Bull.

Lando Norris had been tipped on Thursday to be Red Bull's nearest challenger, and the British driver is firmly in the mix after finishing third in both sessions. The McLaren was 0.464s off the pace in Practice Two.

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"It's not insignificant, but the gap is not as big as I was fearing it would be and the competition as well," Sky Sports F1's Anthony Davidson said, looking ahead to qualifying which takes place at 7am on Saturday, with build-up from 6am on Sky Sports F1.

"My goodness, Max looks like he's in his element around here."

The session was brought to a premature end two minutes earlier after Pierre Gasly crashed out at the second Degner corner. The Alpine was 19th, with only Logan Sargeant's Williams behind him.

Back at the front, Singapore GP race winner Carlos Sainz was half a second down on Verstappen's benchmark in fourth, narrowly ahead of George Russell in fifth.

But Lewis Hamilton struggled in the second Mercedes and ended up 14th on the timesheet with his second flying lap on the soft tyre, having made an error on his initial attempt.

Two-time Japanese GP winner and 1996 world champion Damon Hill said: "It could be a closer race than it is in qualifying, from what it appears at the moment.

"Lewis generally comes strong on Saturdays and during the race. He's out of it at the moment but he'll be back."

Sergio Perez also remained well adrift of Verstappen in the second Red Bull, once again over a second behind his team-mate down in ninth.

The Mexican ended up behind Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin, Alex Albon's Williams and Oscar Piastri's McLaren, with 0.17s covering those three drivers.

Valtteri Bottas rounded out the top 10 for Alfa Romeo, edging out Lance Stroll who was back in the Aston Martin on Friday after missing the Singapore GP race.

Just three tenths of a second covered Alonso in sixth and Hamilton in 14th, to suggest Saturday's qualifying will feature a tightly-contested battle to reach Q3.

What did drivers say after Friday at Suzuka?

Max Verstappen: "It felt really good today. From lap one, the car was enjoyable to drive again. It seems like we had a strong day on short runs and long runs.

"It looks like it's all a bit tight behind me between Ferrari and McLaren. We will have a look. At the end of the day, we will just focus on ourselves and try to optimise our performance. If we do that, I'm confident we will fight for pole."

Charles Leclerc: "Red Bull seem to be extremely quick this weekend but I don't think we are so far off.

"We are understanding our car much better than we did before Zandvoort and that helps us to be on the good side of things because everything is so close with McLaren and Mercedes. Whenever we put our car in the right window then we can be in front and that's what we've done the last few races. That is what the target is for [Saturday].

"But even if we do everything perfect this weekend I expect Red Bull to be stronger unfortunately."

Lando Norris: "The pace has been pretty good, probably one of the closest times we've been to Red Bull and the front lot on a Friday so encouraging on a pace point of view.

"But the car feels pretty all over the place. But I think it does for the majority, I think it's very low grip. I don't think it's just us in particular, it's just a handful.

"For us, if we can just try and calm it down a little bit, bring the balance together then I think we can have a good day (on Saturday).

Lewis Hamilton: "It was a pretty bad day to be honest. A real struggle out there. A long way off, two seconds off in the first session and over a second off in the second.

"We'll work on it overnight and try to turn it around for [Saturday]. We definitely won't be winning this weekend but if I can move a little bit further up the order so I can at least back up George, who did not such a bad lap."

Sergio Perez: This morning, we were a bit off balance on our side. I think we had some pretty good understanding on the direction we have to take.

"Certainly, things are looking a lot better than they did last weekend, which is positive. Looking forward to Qualifying well because degradation seems to be quite high around this place, especially with the hot temperatures we are expecting.

"I believe we will be strong tomorrow and on Sunday."

What happened in Practice One?

In Friday morning's opening hour, Verstappen and Red Bull had quickly set down an ominous marker to show they would be back at the front at Suzuka.

Verstappen made his intentions for this weekend clear from the off by being the first man out on track when the green light came on and never vacating the top of the timesheet. He was 1.7 seconds faster than anyone else with his opening effort of the day.

His 1:31.647 on soft tyres midway through the session proved to be the best of the opening hour, and was six tenths of a second clear of the rest of the field.

Singapore race winner Sainz was the driver to get closest to Verstappen, but the Ferrari was 0.626s back in second.

McLaren waited until the very end of the session to run the soft tyre, with Norris slotting into third - seven tenths down on Verstappen and narrowly ahead of the other Ferrari of Leclerc.

Perez could not get close to Red Bull team-mate Verstappen despite conducting his soft tyre efforts at a similar time and was 1.396s slower down in 11th. However the Mexican was running Red Bull's old floor while Verstappen had an updated edition first tested in Singapore.

Neither Hamilton nor Russell put on the soft tyre in the opening hour and the two Mercedes drivers ended up 16th and 13th respectively.

Yuki Tsunoda gave his home fans something to cheer by slotting his AlphaTauri into fifth place and within a second of Verstappen's benchmark.