Max Verstappen led from the lights out, both times, at Suzuka, to win the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday, April 6. He won his third race of the 2024 Formula 1 season and the 57th of his career. His teammate Sergio Perez took the moment place, his third time this year.
Carlos Sainz continued his season by completing the podium and achieving third place.
Charles Leclerc had a very good one-stop race and finished fourth. Lando Norris appeared to have short race pace, but was unable to maintain his starting third position and finished fifth.
Fernando Alonso once again was cunning and held on to sixth position thanks to clever driving. George Russell overtook Oscar Piastri on the final lap to take seventh, pushing Piastri up to eighth. Lewis Hamilton found no solace in his team’s strategic moves and could only finish ninth, while the story of the day for the Japanese crowd was to see Yuki Tsunoda take the highest-paying position in tenth position.
The front of the grid was lost, but Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon collided, crashed into the barriers and caused the race to be red-flagged at the end of the first lap. Verstappen set up the point with Perez next to him. , while Norris moved up to third.
On track he faced the challenge of restoring the tire barriers that Ricciardo and Albon had compromised in their accident. One of the entertaining elements came here in the form of a second start, which necessarily served as a redesign of the race.
With the lights out again, Verstappen gave his most productive impression of Verstappen and took the lead and looked ahead to the race. Most of the drivers found themselves in their expected places, with the exception of the Mercedes drivers, with whom the team started strongly. tires for restart. Sauber and Haas also felt the hard tyres were the way to overtake and took their drivers to lap 10 for the changeover.
By lap ten, Verstappen was 2. 5 seconds ahead of Perez and appeared to be doing what has been popular in F1 for the past two years.
Lando Norris pitted on lap 12 but found no one was following him in the pits, creating a scenario where McLaren and Ferrari appeared to use other undercut and overcut strategies.
Zhou Guanyu retired on lap 14 due to what was reported to be electrical issues after it was noticed that the team was running in the cockpit of the car during its pit stop.
Russell and Hamilton had stayed away from the pits, something much of the pit crew had enjoyed. The attempt to make the hard tyres last for a more sensible strategy seemed questionable. At the front, Verstappen, Norris and Perez had no trouble holding on. to the 3 most sensible places.
On lap 37, the first-place pit pits led Sainz to test the new Pirelli cars and propelled him to seventh. Verstappen held the lead by 7. 5sec over Perez, with Leclerc third still on worn tyres.
The seven most sensible drivers ran on hard tyres on lap 41, with both Mercedes drivers using mediums. Sainz benefited from the cooler mediums and overtook Norris on lap 44, moving up to fourth, with team-mate Leclerc in front, with Sainz sending Leclerc on lap 46. At this point, the race became a normal parade, with the exception of Russell, who got ahead of Piastri when the two reached the final lap.
“It’s a great race,” Max Verstappen said at the end, his voice flat, almost flat, reflecting his own expectations and his disappointing reaction to some other win.
As an editor and publisher, Ava presents the Formula 1 policy for the site and also appears in several of its most important columns. Ava earned a master’s degree in Sports Studies from UGA and a doctorate in American Studies from UH-Mānoa. Her thesis Chased Women, NASCAR’s Dads and the South’s Inhospitality: How NASCAR Exports The South is in the process of publishing a book.