Norris Leads Piastri in Brazilian Practice
The British driver has outperformed Oscar Piastri at each of the previous five grands prix.
Lando Norris edged out team-mate and championship contender the Australian for the fastest time in the dying seconds of practice at the Brazilian Grand Prix.
The British racer, who took the title advantage from Piastri by a single point after taking the win in the Mexican Grand Prix a fortnight back, beat the Australian by a tiny margin of 0.023secs.
Earlier in the session, Oscar Piastri had been the quickest of the McLaren pair for most of the session before sprint qualifying scheduled for 6:30 PM GMT.
The Red Bull star, the other racer in the championship fight, trailing with a 36-point deficit Norris, ended up in P17 as his Red Bull team opted for a different programme.
His teammate Yuki Tsunoda was the sole competitor to have an incident, albeit lightly, when he spun at corner four early in the session.
Tsunoda lost control over the curbs on exit before rotating through the run-off area, and was lucky to escape with just a minor contact of the fence.
The Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton also spun, at the very end of the session, rotating twice through the quick descending corner leading to the final bend on to the start-finish straight.
The seven-time champion ended the session in 19th, just behind team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Norris and Piastri were significantly quicker of the rest of the field, with Nico Hulkenberg's car third fastest, 0.619secs slower than Piastri's pace.
Aston Martin's the Spanish driver was fourth quickest, with the Sauber of Gabriel Bortoleto fifth from the Mercedes of Russell and Alpine's Gasly and the Williams of Sainz.
