Triple world champion Max Verstappen dominated the Japanese Grand Prix, leading a Red Bull Racing 1-2 with Sergio Perez finishing a solid podium.
Melbourne winner Carlos Sainz completed the podium ahead of his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, who popped up in Perez’s race and gained several positions from his mid-pack grid spot by completing a rare Suzuka one-stop strategy.
At the first start, polesitter Verstappen easily led Perez away from the line, with the action occurring far back in the pack as the medium-starting RB cars got overtaken by soft-running rivals.
When they raced into Turn 3, Daniel Ricciardo moved over on Alex Albon – unsighted that the Williams was on his right-hand side – and the pair making contact and straight into the barriers at the start of the Esses.
The race was immediately stopped and a near 30-minute delay took place as the tyre wall was repaired.
In the second standing start, Verstappen again maintained his lead away from pole, this time moving aggressively across his teammate on the approach to the opening corners.
Perez managed to stay within a second for when DRS was activated on lap four of 57, but slipped back slightly until on lap six he ran wide out of Degner two and lost nearly a second.
The gap between the leaders continued extending until Perez stopped first for more mediums – the Red Bull duo having stayed on the mediums they had used at the initial start for the second attempt – on lap 15, where he trailed by nearly five seconds.
Verstappen was called in the next time around, but when he emerged he had a new chaser – Lando Norris, who had been the first of the frontrunners to pit on lap 11, where he took hards.
At this stage Leclerc led for Ferrari, as he stayed out longest from the leading pack – except the Mercedes cars that moved from mediums to hards during the red flag – having started down in eighth.
But by the end of lap 21 Verstappen was back to the front – after he had used DRS to easily move ahead of Leclerc on the outside line into Turn 1, and he had a 4.3 seconds lead over Norris in third, with Perez a further 1.2 seconds back.
But on the next lap, Perez dived by Norris at the chicane and so he started lap 23 with a 6.5 seconds gap to his teammate.
Over the rest of the second stint, Verstappen moved clear to an 11 seconds lead over Perez, who took several laps to catch and pass Leclerc, getting by when one-stopping Ferrari slipped off the road at Degner two on lap 26.
Checo again stopped first of the two leaders for the final pitstops, where both Red Bulls took the hards, on lap 33, with Verstappen coming in the next time by.
In the final stint, the leading duo were again initially separated by Leclerc, who had pitted for the first time at the end of the lap he slid off in front of Perez, with McLaren bringing Norris in at the same time to prevent Russell’s undercut threat in the pack behind.
Leclerc was able to run clear of Norris and cycled back to becoming a factor for Red Bull given he was not set to stop again, but the second time around, Perez was quickly by the Ferrari with a DRS run to Turn 1’s inside.
The final 15 laps kicked off with Verstappen’s lead reduced to eight seconds due to the undercuts powerful effect, but Max brought this back up to 12.5 seconds by the flag.
In the fight for the final podium position, Leclerc maintained his lead over Norris for the duration of his second stint and the McLaren’s third, but both were passed by Sainz in the closing stages after the Ferrari driver built a notable tyre offset life advantage in the middle stint of his two-stopper.
Norris finished three seconds behind Leclerc in fourth, ahead of Fernando Alonso, who appeared to be adapting his pace late on to give the chasing Oscar Piastri DRS in his own last-gasp fight with Russell.
The pair clashed at the chicane with four laps to go, the same place where Piastri locked up on the penultimate lap and Russell was able to charge down the pit straight and gain seventh at Turn 1 at the start of the final lap.
Lewis Hamilton ended up in ninth position – his race notable for offering to allow Russell by during the initial phase after the restart – which Mercedes then enacted as it tried to replicate Leclerc’s one-stop tactic before switching its cars back to a two-stopper.
To the delight of the Japanese fans, Yuki Tsunoda secured the final point in P10, including two thrilling overtakes through the Esses complex.
The race’s other retirement was Zhou Guanyu, who stopped with a gearbox issue aboard his Sauber on lap 13.
So congratulations to Max Verstappen in winning the Japanese Grand Prix. Just like last year’s Suzuka race, Carlos Sainz won the previous race and immediately the Red Bull driver strike back to be triumph. The next event is the Chinese Grand Prix and it has been four years since we last raced in Shanghai. Hopefully we get another exciting racing action.
Japanese Grand Prix, race results:
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:54:23.566
2 Sergio Perez Red Bull +12.535s
3 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +20.866s
4 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +26.522s
5 Lando Norris McLaren +29.700s
6 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin +44.272s
7 George Russell Mercedes +45.951s
8 Oscar Piastri McLaren +47.525s
9 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +48.626s
10 Yuki Tsunoda RB +1 lap
11 Nico Hulkenberg Haas +1 lap
12 Lance Stroll Aston Martin +1 lap
13 Kevin Magnussen Haas +1 lap
14 Valtteri Bottas Sauber +1 lap
15 Esteban Ocon Alpine +1 lap
16 Pierre Gasly Alpine +1 lap
17 Logan Sargeant Williams +1 lap
Zhou Guanyu Sauber DNF
Daniel Ricciardo RB DNF
Alexander Albon Williams DNF
Max Verstappen bounced back from his retirement in Australia with a commanding drive to victory during Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix, taking the chequered flag ahead of Red Bull team mate Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
Verstappen led the way from start to finish as warmer than expected weather conditions, a variety of tyre strategies and a first-lap accident involving RB’s Daniel Ricciardo and the Williams of Alex Albon all played their part in proceedings.
It meant a third successive pole-to-victory conversion for the Dutchman at Suzuka, while also marking a third win from four races in 2024, boosting his lead in the drivers’ championship after it was dented by a brake-related retirement last time out at Albert Park.
Fresh from an improved qualifying display that saw him finish just over half a tenth away from pole, Perez backed up Verstappen to give Red Bull another one-two finish after their perfect results in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to kick off the season.
Australian Grand Prix winner Sainz was the last of the front-runners to make their final pit stop and benefitted from fresher rubber to clear McLaren’s Lando Norris and team mate Charles Leclerc in the closing laps – the latter having completed one stop fewer on an alternate strategy.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/verstappen-leads-home-perez-for-red-bull-one-two-at-japanese-gp-after-early.1rtPVvnBYJgZIEppNtk6ZD
Daniel Ricciardo feels his Japanese Grand Prix opening lap crash with Alex Albon was a “singular moment” and not part of his tough start to the 2024 Formula 1 season.
The eight-time grand prix winner had been expected to lead the RB charge having returned to F1 midway through last season, but instead he has endured a difficult season and been outperformed by team-mate Yuki Tsunoda.
Matters were compounded when he clashed with Albon at Turn 3 on the opening lap of the Suzuka race which sent both drivers into the barriers.
“Today is [a] singular moment. I don’t look at today and think ‘oh, man this year,’ like… ‘when it rains, it pours,’ or whatever. I feel it was just one of those things,” Ricciardo said.
“We know [across] that 24 races, it’s likely that maybe I’m involved in another lap one incident, there’s just probability [that] these things kind of happen. It obviously sucks when they do. But I don’t look at it any more than today being a kind of singular incident.
“Of course, [it] would have been nice to get a race under our belt and try to show a little bit of something that I felt we were starting to show yesterday. We’ll do that in China. I’m actually testing on Tuesday. So the laps that I missed today – I’ll get back on Tuesday.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ricciardo-albon-clash-a-singular-moment-not-part-of-tough-start-to-f1-2024/10596062/
Alex Albon says he was thinking about Williams’ spare parts situation even before he hit the wall while crashing out of Formula 1’s Japanese Grand Prix.
On the opening lap, Albon was hit by RB’s poor-starting Daniel Ricciardo in Turn 3, at the start of the Esses.
The team still has no spare chassis available, which made Logan Sargeant sit out the Australian Grand Prix after Albon damaged his chassis in a practice shunt and took over his team-mate’s car.
“Immediately. Before I even hit the wall,” he replied when asked when the spare chassis situation played on his mind.
“It’s exactly what we don’t need. The impact itself was relatively low speeds, but it’s the way that I hit the tyre wall. Normally, we have this kind of plastic barriers, the Armco. But this was much more dug in and it really stops very violently.
“They’re the questions I’m worried about, not for me, [but] for the car, because that’s where you can do damage.
“We haven’t had the car back yet. We need to assess it, hopefully it’s okay.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/albon-worried-about-williams-f1-spares-before-i-even-hit-the-wall/10596069/
Toto Wolff felt Mercedes “would’ve been racing for a podium” but endured “an atrocious first stint” that undid its pace in the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix.
At the restart after the first-lap red flag caused by the crash between Alex Albon and Daniel Ricciardo, Mercedes swapped George Russell and Lewis Hamilton from medium tyres to the hard compound in a strategy switch that targeted a one-stop plan.
But both drivers struggled for pace on the hards and, after failing to find sufficient gains after their first stop to another set of hard tyres, Russell and Hamilton reverted to a two-stop strategy to end the race on the mediums they used for the first lap.
“We ended up where we started and it was just very difficult,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1. “We had a second and third stint that was super quick and we would’ve been racing for a podium but an atrocious first stint.
“We need to find out what it was, was it too hot, were we overmanaging.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/wolff-mercedes-podium-possible-but-atrocious-first-stint-in-f1-japanese-gp/10596128/
McLaren’s Lando Norris says he was “fighting a losing battle” against the quicker Ferraris as he dropped from third to fifth in Formula 1’s Japanese Grand Prix.
Norris qualified close to the front-row starting Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez on Saturday.
But on Sunday it quickly became apparent Norris’ real battle was with the cars behind, with Carlos Sainz being an immediate threat and Charles Leclerc fighting his way back into contention with a bold one-stop strategy.
“It was as expected, to be honest with you,” Norris said when quizzed by Motorsport.com/Autosport about sliding back to fifth.
“It was hard in the beginning when you’re trying to push to keep up with a quicker car or push to stay ahead of the Ferraris, which were quicker.
“You hurt the tyres more and it’s just kind of like a bit of a spiral, fighting a losing battle out there.
“So, not a bad day. We are where we kind of expected to be in the end, which is behind Ferrari. It’s where we’ve been all year.
“Yesterday we just excelled, I put in some very strong laps, and made us look maybe a bit too good. And today it was a bit more back to reality.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/norris-fighting-a-losing-battle-against-quicker-ferraris-in-f1-japan/10596097/