A 2024 of one-twos: Verstappen dominates at Suzuka in front of Perez!

The Japanese Grand Prix ends with a Red Bull one-two, thus rebalancing the verdict of the last race in Melbourne. The "usual" Verstappen wins ahead of Perez, but immediately behind we find the two Ferraris of Sainz and Leclerc - actually with a fairly small gap, considering the vicissitudes of their race.

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Before analyzing what happened from a performance perspective, here's the final classification of the Suzuka race, the stage of the fourth one-two in 4 races at this 2024 Formula 1 World Championship's start:

Here's how they took the flag 🏁#F1 #JapaneseGP pic.twitter.com/rntDivBQYm

— Formula 1 (@F1) April 7, 2024

A perfect Red Bull, but Ferrari's gap to them has halved compared to 2023!

Today's winner Max Verstappen ran a race almost entirely in the lead, setting a pace quick enough to ensure that no one behind him could worry him, least of all his teammate Perez, who - as we'll see later on - was paying an average gap of 3 tenths per lap compared to the World Champion.

The Dutchman, as shown in the chart below, also conceded himself the luxury of the fastest lap, surprisingly achieving it after having already ran a few laps in his last stint; pretty much everyone else was able to extract the best from their car immediately after their outlaps, then undergoing a performance drop that prevented them from improving their laptimes...

Personal best laptime in the race for the 5 top teams' drivers

Given the little internal competition in the Red Bull garage, the most truthful comparison must be made with the team that clearly proved the second quickest today, namely Ferrari. The battle between the two teams that are performing best at the start of this season took place in a context in which the high temperatures and the inherently demanding nature of the Suzuka track on tyres shifted the focus to the strategical side.

Race pace analysis of the Japanese GP - Red Bull vs Ferrari

As far as tyre degradation was concerned, from the data we can observe that the SF-24 allowed both its drivers to limit their gap to the front. This is especially true if you consider that Leclerc was able to convert his strategy into a single pitstop along the way, extending his initial stint on Medium tyres even up to half of the race (keeping on competitive laptimes, a rather significant detail!).

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It's a shame for the Monegasque driver that the first part of this initial stint was ruined by the presence in front of him of the slower Piastri, who in hindsight caused him to lose precious seconds also in terms of podium ambitions. The above-mentioned strategy nevertheless proved to be favourable, to the point that Charles completely offset the enormous gap that separated him from the other McLaren, the one of Lando Norris - who had started from third position on the grid.

Race pace analysis of the Japanese GP - Leclerc vs Norris vs Alonso vs Russell vs Piastri vs Hamilton

As can be seen in the graph above, in addition to the Englishman, the Ferrari driver was even able to overcome Fernando Alonso and George Russell with his single pitstop, having been them ahead of him at the start of the race. From the moment he returned to the track with his set of Hard tyres, the only one of them to keep up with his SF-24 was Norris: a similar dynamic to what we saw in Australia and partly in Bahrain, where Charles had brake issues which made the outcome of that race not very indicative performance-wise, though.

At the end of the 53 laps of the race, the gap paid by Ferrari (namely Sainz) over Red Bull was around 20 seconds, compared to the 45 seconds inflicted - also by Verstappen - on the Maranello team in the 2023 edition of the same GP.

Who emerges behind Red Bull and Ferrari at Suzuka?

If we average the laptimes between the 5 top teams over the stints into which they divided their Japanese Grand Prix, we can extract important trends to understand how the teams in the first half of the standings performed, net vicissitudes that slowed down this or that driver.

Analysis of the race stints from the top teams - Japanese GP

Having said that Red Bull and Ferrari, clearly first and second quickest on the Land of the Rising Sun, merely looking at the final classification we'd be tempted to assess that the role of third fastest team belongs to McLaren. Instead, somewhat in contrast with this assumption, I believe that the MCL38 performed poorly today, being in race conditions that on paper should have been favorable to it. Also considering that the strategy chosen by Mercedes (Hard - Hard - Medium) proved to be nothing short of disastrous in the pitstops timing, I believe that the third fastest team has been the one from Brackley.

Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

I would therefore put McLaren in fourth place in this virtual ranking, in which immediately behind we find the Aston Martin of the always fighting Fernando Alonso. The problem for the latter is that his trend for 2024 sees him doing well in qualifying, only to then have a significantly worse AMR24 at his disposal in full tank condition, where he's often prey to the other Mercedes-powered teams. Alonso's luck (or, better said, his talent) lies in being so effective in defending his position in close battles that he ends with offsetting the technical advantage that the rivals behind him have on Sunday.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

We're well accustomed to the skills of the Spanish double World Champion at the wheel, but if Lawrence Stroll's team wants to become capable of fighting for the World Title, what they are putting into play now is simply not enough, as Lance Stroll's performance demonstrated today too... The upgrade plan envisaged by the Silverstone team will play a key role in sealing those ambitions: hopefully for them, it will have to be way more effective than the (disastrous) one in 2023.

Tsunoda, special guest in the points paying positions, once again in the top ten!

Following an excellent qualifying, surprisingly even today Yuki Tsunoda managed to "drag" his RB VCARB 01 into the points zone, grabbing the single point for the tenth place finisher. An important achievement, result of both the suboptimal performance of Lance Stroll and the strong race of the home hero, who - until now - had never been among the top ten on his home soil.

Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Things are going decidedly worse for his teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who continues his negative record with a first lap accident that put his car and Alex Albon's Williams out of action. In my opinion, the responsibility for the contact is a little more on Alex's shoulders...

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We're talking about responsibility and not actual fault because the unfortunate positioning of the two during the accident meant that Daniel didn't have a clear enough view to be able to give the Anglo-Thai enough space exiting Turn 2, while the latter attempted a move that was too aggressive in hindsight.

Due to this crash, Williams is in trouble with their availability of intact chassis: the race against time in the factory at Grove to build the much-needed third chassis is in full swing. The target will be to have it available for the next race in two weeks in China, in occasion of the return of the Shanghai track to the calendar after the 1000th race in the history of Formula 1, way back in 2019.