Lando Norris Leads Oscar Piastri in Sao Paulo Practice
Lando Norris has beaten his teammate at all of the previous five race weekends.
The McLaren driver edged out team-mate and title rival the Australian for the fastest time in the dying seconds of practice at the Brazilian Grand Prix.
The British racer, who grabbed the championship lead from Piastri by one point after taking the win in Mexico City two weeks ago, topped the Melbourne-born driver by 0.023 seconds.
Before then, Piastri had been the quickest of the McLaren pair for most of the session before sprint qualifying set to begin at 18:30 GMT.
The Red Bull star, the other racer in the points battle, lying with a 36-point deficit behind Norris, ended up in 17th place as his Red Bull team ran a different programme.
Verstappen's team-mate the Japanese driver was the sole competitor to have an incident, if briefly, when he spun at the fourth corner soon after starting.
The Japanese lost control over the track edges before spinning across the gravel trap, and was lucky to avoid just a light touch of the wall.
Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton also spun, at the very end of the practice, rotating twice through the fast downhill corner approaching the last turn on to the start-finish straight.
The veteran wrapped up in 19th place, one place behind team-mate the Monegasque driver.
Norris and Piastri were significantly quicker of the rest of the field, with the German's Sauber third fastest, 0.619 seconds slower than Piastri's best.
Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso was fourth fastest, with the Sauber of Bortoleto in front of Mercedes' Russell and the Alpine of Pierre Gasly and the Williams of Sainz.
