2024 Japanese Grand Prix | 9 talking points

“Old married couple” on top again

The only blip this time for Verstappen appeared to be a minor disagreement on set-up with his amusingly verbose engineer Gianpiero Lambiase – but as we’ve seen countless times before, that’s just par for the course for this odd couple.

As Verstappen successfully negotiated two race starts, then calmly claimed his 57^th career win, he and his engineer referred on the radio to a disagreement on set-up – and as Lambiase made clear with his “I won’t say I told you so” quip, it was the man on the pitwall whose view had proven correct. Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has described the pair as an “old married couple”, and it’s clear an edge of tension helps fuel their healthy (and super-successful) driver/engineer relationship. Whatever works.

Verstappen finished a comfy 12.5 seconds ahead of team-mate Pérez, the Mexican pitching in a solid but unspectacular display as speculation continues to swirl about his future beyond the end of this season. Pérez qualified within 0.066 seconds of the triple world champion, but could offer no threat in the race. Still, he was well up the road from the final podium finisher and Australian GP winner Carlos Sainz Jr.

Sainz comes good in final stint

In a race dominated by divergent tyre strategies at a Suzuka circuit known for its high-degradation characteristics, the full picture only emerged in the final laps of a grand prix that featured plenty of overtaking – without too much in the way of edge-of-seat thrills.

Sainz was outqualified by Lando Norris’s McLaren and consolidated his fourth place in the early stages, then ran long on his medium Pirellis which initially appeared to backfire as rivals undercut him at the first stops. But that left him with a healthy tyre offset in the final stint and on a set of hards the race came back to Sainz. He picked off Norris into Turn One, then found his team-mate Charles Leclerc was no threat to secure Ferrari another podium finish.

Leclerc’s one-stop drop

Once again the Spaniard was the top Ferrari driver, having outperformed Leclerc across the weekend – all after the pre-season decision to drop him next year in favour of Lewis Hamilton. No wonder Sainz remains the key driver in the 2025 ‘silly season’.

As for a frustrated Leclerc, he also drove a fine race with a long 27-lap first stint on the yellow-walled mediums. He was the only one to make the one-stop strategy work at Suzuka, but while it lifted him from eighth on the original grid to fourth at the flag, it also left him without firepower to remain on the podium in the final stages.

Norris slips backwards

Last autumn, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were the only drivers to provide any sort of threat to Verstappen and Red Bull. But a little more than six months later, with the Japanese Grand Prix running in its new spring date, the Formula 1 picture has shifted – in Ferrari’s favour.

Norris put in a great effort to qualify third and ahead of his old mate Sainz, but come race day it was clear he didn’t have enough to claim a podium. Ferrari is clearly best of the rest in 2024 behind Red Bull, although at least for McLaren it appears to have an edge over Mercedes and Aston Martin. Still, Norris cut a slightly frustrated figure after this one – even if it was a state of play he’d fully expected.

Alonso plays more games

The best battle of the race played out in the final laps as Fernando Alonso was hunted by Piastri and George Russell. There had been a mixed response to Alonso’s not-quite-a-brake-test defence against Russell in Australia, which ultimately earned him a penalty. Here, he again deployed a bit of gamesmanship, and you’d have to say it worked a treat.

Alonso backed himself into Piastri to ensure Russell could gain a DRS tow from the McLaren, leaving the young Aussie watching his mirrors more than attacking the Aston. On a weekend where Alonso had made the most of the team’s latest technical updates, he capped another fine performance to finish sixth. Although as he pointed out when asked post-race about what his plans might be for 2025, he was still 44 seconds down on Verstappen. The only seat that is guaranteed to give him a true shot at the Dutchman next year is the one in the garage next to the world champion.

Meanwhile, Lance Stroll toiled to 12^th, petulantly whinging about his car feeling like it was from “another category” in terms of straight-line speed. Just how much longer will the boss’s son persevere in F1? Too often he’s woefully underwhelming.

Russell’s last-lap pass on Piastri

Alonso’s tactics gave Piastri a headache that eventually led to a mistake. A small error at the chicane gave Russell the run he needed into Turn One to relieve McLaren’s sophomore of seventh place on the very last lap.

Russell had started ninth so that represented a reasonable net gain. But squabbling just outside of the top six only added to the sense of gloom that still hangs over troubled Mercedes.

Leclerc contact hobbles Hamilton

“Shall I let George by?” is not the type of question anyone expects to hear from Lewis Hamilton. Yet here he was, seemingly resigned to playing second-fiddle to his team-mate – despite having outqualified him the day before.

It turned out, as Hamilton later revealed, that slight contact with Leclerc’s Ferrari had left compromising damage to the Mercedes and he knew his car was in no fit state to take the fight to Alonso’s Aston Martin and the McLarens, never mind the red cars. An underwhelming ninth was all the seven-time champion had to show for his work.

Tsunoda makes his point (again) at home

Great pit work from his RB crew lifted Yuki Tsunoda past Valtteri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen, Stroll and Logan Sargeant in one fell swoop as they all pitted at the same time, as the Japanese followed up his fine seventh in Australia with another point for tenth at his home race.

He’d lost places at the start, but a bold team call to give him used soft tyres allowed Tsunoda to climb back into the points – only for an early stop for hard tyres to cost him track position. That’s when the pit crew came into their own at the final time of asking. Great stuff from RB and Tsunoda, especially compared to his team-mate – but it doesn’t feel enough to push him into the frame for promotion to Red Bull’s A-team beside Verstappen for next year. But what more can he realistically do?

More woe for Williams

The two starts were required following an early red-flag stoppage when Tsunoda’s RB team-mate Daniel Ricciardo unintentionally moved over on Alex Albon’s Williams into the esses for the first time. Their crash and heavy damage to barriers enforced a 20-minute delay before the action could restart and only added to the sorry state of things at Williams, which faces more logistically challenging (and costly) repairs to one of its cars before the following round in China the week after next.

Sargeant too didn’t help the cause with his embarrassing FP1 crash on Friday, before he understeered off in the closing stages of the race and had to reverse through the Degner 2 gravel trap to rejoin. He at least finished, but only 17^th and last, behind the sorry Alpines of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.