Sublime Suzuka performance secures Verstappen win

F1 is a team game, we all know that. Without a decent car drivers have no chance to win. Now, Red Bull’s RB21 is hardly a bad one, but it’s clearly not the fastest in these early stages of the new season.

Yet, Verstappen stepped up at Suzuka and put in the sort of performance that reminds us that the very best F1 drivers do still make all the difference when push comes to shove. The four-time Champion fully earned his 64^th Grand Prix victory and record fourth in succession in Japan, and deserves the lion’s share of credit. Not many others could have beaten the McLaren duo in the same circumstances.

A race won on Saturday

It’s not uncommon (to the point where it’s become something of a cliché) that this was a classic case where Verstappen ‘won’ the Japanese Grand Prix on Saturday through his stunning final effort in qualifying that just allowed him to pip Norris to an unexpected pole position.

It’s a positive sign for the season ahead that of the four qualifying sessions so far (including for the sprint race in China) we’ve had a different pole winner each time. Less positively, at one of the best circuits on the calendar the top six finished in the same order they started at Suzuka. It was a long way short of a classic race.

Verstappen made a strong getaway at the lights and, having arrowed his Red Bull to the right to block any challenge from Norris, there was never any doubt over who would get to Turn 1 first. From that point, he had control – and was never going to let it slip.

Could Norris have undercut Verstappen?

A question mark remains over McLaren’s strategy choice, on a day when cool, benign conditions made this an easy race for Pirelli’s tyres. Without graining or degradation to worry about, the drivers were able to race flat out. Just as it should be, the purists might say. But on the rare occasions such a scenario occurs these days, you end up with a processional race with cars of close to equal performance that struggle to make a pass, even with the aid of DRS.

That meant when the leaders made their single stops to switch from Pirelli’s medium to hard tyres, Norris had his only realistic chance to get ahead of Verstappen. But McLaren lost the initiative by stopping Piastri first, because they were concerned the early-stopping George Russell might be an undercut threat to the Australian.

The team had already attempted to sell Red Bull a dummy by radioing Norris that he’d be stopping on lap 18, then told him to stay out. Red Bull didn’t blink. Instead, Piastri came in on lap 19, then both Verstappen, Norris and fourth-placed Charles Leclerc all trundled in a lap later. By stopping at the same time as Verstappen, Norris’s only hope was for rapid work by his pit crew and a Red Bull fumble to get him out ahead.

Norris forced off 

As it turned out, it almost came off. Red Bull’s stop was a second slower, meaning Norris rejoined almost alongside Verstappen as they accelerated out of the pitlane. But Norris ran out of track and was forced to briefly bump along the grass, in a moment that could have cost him dear. His chance for victory had gone, but at least he remained ahead of Piastri – and his race hadn’t ended in the wall.

Initially and predictably, there was gamesmanship on the radio. “He forced me off,” Norris reported back, to the stewards more than to his own pitwall. “He drove himself on to the grass,” was Verstappen’s defensive verdict. “He saw me alongside. I was easily alongside,” insisted Norris, while Verstappen even suggested his old friend had come off the pitlane speed limiter too early in his efforts to get ahead.

In reality, the stewards took a quick look and correctly ruled there had been no foul play. Verstappen held his ground, didn’t deviate from his line of trajectory and did exactly what Norris would expect him to do – as the Englishman admitted after the race. You get no favours from Max when you go wheel-to-wheel, but in this case it was fair game.

So, might Norris have undercut ahead had he stopped a lap earlier when Piastri came in? He was about 1.4 seconds behind the Red Bull at the time and perhaps could have unleashed the pace advantage McLaren appeared to have in hand. So perhaps. But also, perhaps not. Verstappen would have responded to any threat and might well have found the speed he needed to repel the challenge. Either way, it would have been a tight one.

Piastri’s push for switching positions

From there, Norris made an effort to save his hard tyres to create an advantage he might use against Verstappen late in the race – but the lack of wear meant it was all in vain. Instead, Piastri closed and began to suggest he should be allowed past to have a crack at the Red Bull. Of course he asked, but such were the fine margins McLaren couldn’t acquiesce – and Norris surely wouldn’t have accepted it had the team asked him to.

So, the race played out in a close stalemate to the chequered flag. On the last lap Norris pushed and overdid it to cut the chicane – “cheeky” was his Piastri’s response – but finished 1.4sec in arrears of the winner. The result leaves Norris with a one-point lead over Verstappen in the Championship, with Piastri 13 behind his team-mate.

A home tribute to Honda

“That’s perfection. Just perfection, Max,” said Verstappen’s engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase as the winner wound it down. In Verstappen’s last race in Japan with Honda power (for now) and carrying a tribute white livery in a nod to the manufacturer’s first F1 cars of the 1960s, this was a fitting result before Red Bull switches to its own, Ford-badged independent propulsion in 2026.

“It was tough, [I was] just pushing very hard especially on the last set [of tyres],” said Verstappen with an air of satisfaction. “The two McLarens were pushing me very hard and it was a lot of fun out there. Not easy of course to manage the tyres, but I’m incredibly happy. It started off quite tough this weekend but [we] didn’t give up, we kept improving the car and today it was in its best form. Of course starting on pole really made it possible to win this race.”

The significance of the result for Honda wasn’t lost on him either. “It was in the back of my mind as well in those last few laps,” he added. “I was like ‘I need to try and stay ahead, it would be a great story for our final farewell race together with Honda here in Japan’. I’m incredibly proud of what we have achieved over all those years together, and I think this is a perfect send-off.”

Antonelli makes history

Behind the top three, Leclerc was left far in their wake, 16 seconds down on the winner at the flag. That’s deflating for Ferrari. Russell was a steady fifth for Mercedes, while his 18-year-old rookie team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli put in another impressive performance to follow him closely to the flag.

Antonelli ran long on his medium tyres which meant he led a chunk of the race in the middle, before finally taking the hard tyre. That made him the youngest driver to ever lead a Grand Prix, at 18 years and 224 days, four days younger than when Verstappen led and won the Spanish Grand Prix in 2016.

Behind the Merc duo, Lewis Hamilton trailed home seventh. He’d tried a different strategy, starting on the hard tyre to finish on the medium which was absolutely worth a try. But it gained him very little. He did at least pick off another impressive rookie, Isack Hadjar in the Racing Bull, to gain one place from his underwhelming eighth on the grid.

Hadjar fell no further to score his first F1 points, ahead of a vocal and very grumpy Alex Albon in the Williams, and another rookie charger Ollie Bearman, who picked up another point in tenth to add to the eighth place he claimed in China.

Tsunoda falls flat in Red Bull debut

The Verstappen performance took much of the heat out of the critical focus on Red Bull, which has received something of a pounding over its treatment of Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda. Overlooking the Japanese to replace Sergio Pérez in favour of the Kiwi, then changing its mind after just two admittedly poor races from Lawson, left principal Christian Horner and driver adviser Helmut Marko looking a little silly.

As it was, Tsunoda made a decent start to his Red Bull A-team debut by showing top ten pace in the opening free practice session. But an error in the second part of qualifying left him just 14^th on the grid – and one place behind demoted Lawson. That was nice and awkward.

In the race, Tsunoda at least made up two places on a day when, as we’ve discussed, any gains were hard won. He moved past Lawson and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly to finish 12^th and out of the points behind Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin. Not a bad recovery, but still – a disappointing result. And he was also 58 seconds behind his race-winning team-mate.

Perhaps this time, given Verstappen’s brilliance and the tyre stalemate at Suzuka, Marko and Horner won’t be too quick to judge. Then again… patience isn’t a virtue in great abundance at Red Bull. Tsunoda needs to do better as the next round comes up fast, later this week in Bahrain.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.