World champion Max Verstappen topped the timesheets in Friday practice for the Saudi Arabia Formula One Grand Prix, having overcome a stomach bug in time for the second race weekend of the season.
Red Bull's Verstappen arrived 24 hours late owing to the illness but showed no after-effects as he posted a leading time of 1 minute 29.617 seconds in the afternoon session which he lowered to 1:29.603 under floodlights on the 6.174-kilometres Jeddah Corniche Course.
But while top by almost half a second in the afternoon, he was only .208 ahead of Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso in the second session, with Sergio Perez .299 back in third in the other Red Bull.
The first session had seen Verstappen ahead of Perez and Alonso for what was the same top-three order as at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix two weeks ago.
The trio had a gap on the rest with Esteban Ocon fourth in the evening ahead of Mercedes' George Russell who more than halved the earlier deficit of more than a second to less than five-tenth.
Lance Stroll was fourth and seventh to confirm the big strides Aston Martin have made.
Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton was sixth and 11th, behind the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in the evening and still almost a second behind Verstappen.
Leclerc will loose 10 places on the starting grid on Sunday in connection with power unit component changes after he failed to finish in Bahrain in an early setback for the Scuderia.
Practice times are not necessarily an indication of a team's strength as drivers can be on different tyres and fuel loads, and part of the sessions are used to get the set-up ready for a full race.
Final practice and qualifying are on Saturday.
