Faint hopes that Max Verstappen could be vulnerable were summarily dashed in qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix. The runaway championship leader delivered a blistering pole position as normal service for the world champion and Red Bull resumed at Suzuka.
Verstappen’s pole lap with a time of 1min 28.877sec was almost six-tenths clear of the second-placed McLaren of Oscar Piastri, with his teammate Lando Norris in third. Piastri, a rookie taking his first front-row start for a grand prix, had put in an immense lap on a circuit he has never raced before to become only the fifth Australian to make the front row.
It was hugely impressive yet for all that Verstappen had pace of a different class, the gap the largest here for 19 years. The high-speed corners of Suzuka are very much suited to the Red Bull’s strengths and the track could perhaps not be more flattering to the current formula of cars, with their enormous downforce and overall speed.
Yet Verstappen was still threading this needle with the arch confidence of a man absolutely at one with his car. As he barrelled through the esses of the first sector he was simply flying, flicking right and left as if glued to the track and it set up the rest of the lap that was to prove so punishingly quick.
“It was on the limit but it felt in control and that is very nice when the car does exactly what you want it to do,” he said. “Here, what makes it very special is that there is no runoff, if you have a moment you are going off, that’s why this track is really beautiful to drive when the car is planted.”
Planted it indeed was and with it he and Red Bull definitively banished any lingering blues from their disappointing showing at the last round in Singapore where they had been off the pace, struggling for balance and were beaten for the first time this season, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz taking the win.
There had been speculation at the time and since that the team may have been affected by the technical directives imposed before Singapore clamping down on body parts including the rear and front wings flexing. Red Bull denied they needed to change any part on their car and that Singapore had simply been an outlier of a circuit to which they had struggled to adapt. They were surely proved conclusively right with this performance and Verstappen was clearly pleased to have made the point on track.
“People were saying it’s all about the technical directive but they can all go and suck on an egg,” he noted with phraseology that avoided profanity but suggested he had recently climbed from a trip to the 1940s in his Tardis.
The remarkable numbers just keep coming for Verstappen and while it is only his second pole in Japan, it is his ninth this season – during which he has already taken 12 wins from 15 races. He can now all but tie up his third consecutive title this weekend. He leads the drivers’ championship from Pérez by 151 points and needs to be ahead by only 146 after the next meeting in Qatar. A win here will make it all but a formality in Doha.
The pole also means the team are well placed to claim the constructors’ championship in Japan with six races remaining. They will take their sixth team title if they equal or better the points Mercedes score here and if Ferrari do not outscore them by 24 points or more, an enormously unlikely outcome.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was in fourth, with Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez in fifth. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were in seventh and eighth for Mercedes. Sainz was sixth for Ferrari and Yuki Tsunoda made it to Q3 to the delight of the home crowd and he finished in ninth for AlphaTauri. Fernando Alonso was in 10th for Aston Martin.
Liam Lawson was in 11th for AlphaTauri, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon in 12th and 14th for Alpine. Alex Albon was 13th for Williams and Kevin Magnussen in 15th for Haas.
Logan Sargeant crashed out in Q1, putting his car in the wall at the final corner and will start from the back of the grid. Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou were in 16th and 19th for Alfa Romeo. Lance Stroll was 17th for Aston Martin and Nico Hülkenberg in 18th for Haas.
