Japanese GP: Verstappen leads Red Bull to 6th Constructor's Title!

It took Max Verstappen a week to silence the rumors that had emerged in Singapore. After the sub-optimal fifth place at Marina Bay, many had pointed the finger at the Technical Directives issued by the FIA (the TD018 and the revised TD039): the common opinion was that the advantage expressed by the RB19 during this season was due to some details that would no longer have been legal after the above-mentioned Technical Directives, and therefore we would never have seen Max win again with the advantage shown during 2023.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

As mentioned, the Japanese Grand Prix issues an clear statement: the English-Austrian team wasn't lying when they said that in Singapore the drop in performance was due to the Marina Bay track characteristics, and the almost 20 seconds gap between Verstappen and Norris (in second place) are there to prove it...

Let's analyze what happened in the race, but not before taking a look at the final classification at Suzuka and the strategies used by each team:

The McLarens way behind the newly crowned World Champions Red Bull

Right from the clutch release at the start, Verstappen immediately made it clear that he would have cancelled anyone's race win ambitions. First Piastri's quicker progress and then Norris' wheel-to-wheel didn't cause the Dutchman to lose his position. Max closed in on the Australian on his right, convincing him to give up, after which in Turn 1 he overtook the Englishman in the other McLaren. From that moment on, he never lost the race lead, except briefly during the pit stops... There's not much to say about Max's race, other than that it was mistake-free and damn fast, with an average advantage over his rivals in each stint of almost half a second!

Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

A domination like many we've already seen this year, but which has a special flavour in Suzuka for multiple reasons: as mentioned, for Max it was important to silence the rumors that emerged during the week; having done it in Japan, at home of Honda's technical partners, is even more important. The icing on the cake is that this success mathematically gives Red Bull its sixth Constructors' Title, a well-deserved achievement if we consider the quality of the Milton Keynes team on both the technical and organizational side, without forgetting how deadly the strategic department can be in the (rare) occasions when the speed of the single-seater alone isn't enough...

"I'm very proud of all the people who work for Red Bull on the track and in the factory, we're having an incredible year... Then winning here is great! The RB19 went very well on every compound used, but the important thing, obviously, it's the victory of the Constructors' World Championship!"

Max Verstappen

"Max was very excited during the week in view of Suzuka, he told me clearly. He told me that he would have liked to win the Grand Prix with a 20 second advantage. And, looking at the laptimes, he was seven tenths shy of it at the finish line [...] It was clear from the first lap in FP1 how he was totally focused on this weekend: on the hard tyres he was 1.7 s faster than the rest of the group, even on medium or soft tyres! His was an exceptional performance, Max is the best driver in F1 right now"

Christian Horner

The second and third step of the podium go to the two McLarens of Norris and Piastri, with the latter achieving the first podium in his career if we don't consider the Sprint held in Spa. After qualifying I was convinced that McLaren could aim for the top 3, especially due to the similarity between the Suzuka track and that of Silverstone, where both Lando and Oscar had shown to be extremely competitive: the area in which the former made the difference over the latter was tyre management, a factor that already we had identified in some other races (I'm thinking of the Hungarian GP) as penalizing for the Australian.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Remember that the Australian born in 2001 is a rookie, and it's often difficult for drivers at their first experiences in Formula 1 to find a nice balance between speed and management: Lewis Hamilton himself, in the first years of his career in the top series, was considered a "tyre-eater", and most likely due to this weakness he lost the 2007 World Championship, when - in his debut year - he got stuck in the pit lane with the tyres finished, in the Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai.

"It's a really special feeling, which I will definitely remember for a long, long time... I can't thank the team enough for giving me this opportunity, there aren't many people in the world who have it in their entire lives. And I managed to have it in my first season! [...] Today actually wasn't my best race ever, but it was enough to get a trophy in the end: so yes, I'm very happy!"

Oscar Piastri

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Norris' 53 laps, however, weren't entirely error-free. In fact, during a Virtual Safety Car, the British driver mismanaged the restart phase, losing around 4 seconds to both those in front and those behind him; luckily for him, this time loss didn't penalize his final result, which without the mistake would still have been the second place he then obtained.

"Another fantastic day for us, we couldn't ask for more than second and third position: the team did an extraordinary job! My start was very good, but even though I didn't have much chance in Turn 2 I tried [. ..] The pace was extremely good today, compared to everyone else. We're not close to Max, but we're not far away either, so it was a very good day. I'm also very happy for Oscar, on his first podium in Formula 1. Congratulations to him!"

Lando Norris

Behind the podium positions, a race long battle between Ferrari and Mercedes!

If the first 3 positions were easily predictable since the first laps, the same cannot be said of those from P4 to P7, contested throughout the race between the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers. In the end, Charles Leclerc came out on top, conducting 3 clean stints away from traffic, managing to capitalize on a small gap over his direct rivals. Behind him, in this same order, Hamilton (P5), Sainz (P6) and Russell (P7). The Englishman in the number 63 Mercedes was the only one of the leading drivers to try an alternative strategy, with a single pit stop instead of two.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Tyre degradation was too high for such a strategy to work, even considering Mercedes' attempt to implement a plan similar to the one hatched by Sainz in the last Singapore GP, against... Carlos himself! When Hamilton, Russell and Sainz (in that order) found themselves within striking distance, Lewis maintained such a pace to ensure George could use DRS to defend himself from the number 55 Ferrari. But Suzuka is not Singapore, and the greater overtaking chances meant that the Prancing Horse driver could still manage to get the better of Russell.

Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

At that point, Hamilton brilliantly managed to hold onto his fifth position from the Spaniard's attacks until the finish line. A P5 which guarantees a small breath of fresh air for the Brackley team, which returns from Japan losing only 4 points to Ferrari: now the gap in the Constructors' Championship classification is only 20 points in favor of Mercedes, but maintaining second position will be a a difficult task if you consider the form of the two teams in the last races.

“We know that on this type of track the McLarens are always very fast, so it's not a surprise... What we need to understand is why in the first high-speed sector they are so much faster than us [...] It was important to overtake Russell quickly, Lewis was pushing hard and I expected them to work as a team to let him pass immediately. So I knew I couldn't waste that much time and I had also managed the tyres before, so I had some rubber left. In the end it was a good overtake!"

Charles Leclerc

"I think we had a very good race, showing good pace. It's a shame what happened in the second pit stop, with Lewis overtaking us: I found myself from being 1.0 s ahead of him to being 8.0 s behind after the pit stop... But I felt pretty good behind the wheel of the SF-23 throughout the race, overall I can say I'm happy. Now we'll have some time to recharge the batteries and get back to fighting in Qatar"

Carlos Sainz

Curiously, it seems that the fight for second position in the Constructors' Championship will go towards those who make the least mistakes, rather than to the team capable of expressing the best performance: in turn, in 2023 all the top teams have experienced periods of technical crises, so finding Ferrari so close to Mercedes despite many races in which the points scored were close to zero is unexpected, to say the least.

"It didn't bother me fighting with my teammate compared to battling with others. At the beginning I felt faster than Lewis, I could overtake him in the first laps and I did, but then I immediately lost position on the straight. After there was another battle around lap 20 and we lost a lot of time there [...] We have to take the positive aspects: we only made one pit stop, which was unlikely. Instead we made it possible and we didn't even waste too much time. I'm happy with this..."

George Russell

At this point, given the recent trend, an overtaking in the standings for fourth position between McLaren and Aston Martin appears less and less unlikely... Alonso alone is doing what he can, but if you consider that in Japan it only collected 4 points compared to the 33 of the McLaren pair, the current gap (49 points) can be closed in three or four races!

What happened between the Alpines in the last laps? Did they miss an opportunity to overtake Alonso?

In the lower points paying positions, behind Alonso in P8, we find the two Alpines of Ocon (P9) and Gasly (P10). The fast Suzuka track placed the French team on a performance level not too dissimilar to the Spaniard's Aston Martin AMR23, and it's not unlikely that with better starting positions, the two French drivers could have get the better of Fernando.

"The race pace was a positive surprise, we could have been ahead of one of the Mercedes if everything had gone well [...] The rear wing? Let's say that our DRS is not yet fully effective, we open it and the car in front keeps pulling away: we need to improve in this area. But as far as riding the kerbs is concerned, I didn't listen to the team radio. With what's in the car I already have enough to do to stay on track!"

Fernando Alonso

Be careful though: the few seconds gap that divided them at the finish line was mainly caused by a terrible strategy from the Aston Martin pitwall, which after opting for a start for Fernando on Soft tyres - discarded by anyone else in the top 10 - called him into the pits very early, forcing him in following stints to waste time fighting with other cars and to extend the tyre life, that had to run more laps than a normal strategy would have recommended.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The comeback of the two Alpines on Fernando Alonso in the last stint saw some tense moments. Starting from a situation with Esteban ahead of Pierre, the Enstone team had opted for a position swap, evidently convinced that the 6 laps less in terms of tyre life of the latter compared to the former could have guaranteed a comeback with a more successful outcome. Certain. But when, with a few laps to go, they realized that neither of them would catch up with the AMR23 before the finish line, they decided to swap positions again, thus favoring Ocon.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Gasly, who had to slow down a lot to give up his position to his teammate, once he crossed the finish line was unable to contain his frustration for what had happened, and a few minutes later - in the usual post-race interviews - he clearly showed some dissent for the outcome of the last laps...

"The race was decent: this is our current level of performance, and we'll have to work hard as a team to improve the package we have at the moment [...] We had to swap positions on the last lap, and frankly I didn't I understood this choice well. I didn't see the need for it, we'll talk about it internally"

Pierre Gasly

A short break before the (Sprint) weekend in Qatar

Having analyzed the most important themes of the race (there would be others, such as Perez's misadventures or Lawson's umpteenth good performance on Alpha Tauri), the Circus will take a week's break, before returning on stage - in the weekend from 06/10 to 08/10 - for the Qatar Grand Prix.

The race in Losail, which entered the calendar in 2021 to guarantee a high number of races even in what was still a period of healthcare emergency, returns to Formula 1 to stay for a long time after the absence of 2022 due to the Football World Cup. The race weekend will feature the Sprint format, an event in which Max Verstappen could even be able to mathematically win his third World Title if he were to score 3 points more than his teammate Perez. This eventuality doesn't seem so unlikely, but I hope - and perhaps Max will also be of the same opinion as me - that such an important goal can be sealed by a more apropriate setting than a Sprint race.

See you on these pages for the Qatar GP, reminding you that you can also follow Race Analysis on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. See you soon!

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