But plenty of notable moments emerged from the race, such as Andrea Kimi Antonelli becoming F1\u2019s youngest race leader and fastest lap setter on Sunday. Meanwhile, Williams has now secured more points in three races than in all of 2024 after Alex Albon finished ninth. But other teams, such as Ferrari and Alpine, face questions after their underwhelming starts to the season contunued.<\/p>\n
Before the next race weekend kicks off in Bahrain, we answered a few of your questions for our post-Japanese GP mailbag.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note: Questions were lightly edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n
As simple as that: is McLaren underestimating Verstappen? \u2014 Raphael C.<\/strong><\/p>\n Quite the opposite, actually.<\/p>\n McLaren team principal Andrea Stella shared Sunday how, all weekend, \u201cit was very clear that Verstappen was close.\u201d When you look at the timing sheets for practice, the Dutchman was about a half-second off in FP1 and FP3 to Norris, but this is without taking into account fuel loads or engine modes and that Verstappen was very unhappy with his early car handling. One thing to remember when analyzing practice sessions, Stella said, is how \u201c10 kilograms of fuel at this circuit is three tenths and a half, and engine modes can be several tenths of a second.\u201d<\/p>\n McLaren thought it had around a one-tenth-of-a-second or so pace advantage. Then came the flying laps in Q3. Verstappen, Norris and Piastri were covered by 0.044 seconds while Charles Leclerc, who qualified fourth, was 0.316 seconds behind Verstappen\u2019s pole position lap (which also set a new unofficial lap record at Suzuka Circuit, as only race fastest laps officially count).<\/p>\n The question arose as to whether Stella felt Verstappen and Red Bull still needed to make a step or if they were already a full-season threat. He stated that he considers both the Dutchman and Red Bull as full-season contenders, as well as the likes of George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, and Leclerc.<\/p>\n He said, \u201cFerrari is struggling a little bit now, but we treat all these certainly within the spectrum of the full season, at least until we have stabilized a little bit. Because at the moment we are still falling within the variability of the circuits. We have (had) Hamilton winning the sprint in China, Russell being competitive in the race in China; here (in Japan), we have Red Bull and Max.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re still in a transient phase, we\u2019ll have to see how things settle down. Definitely the most important condition to pursue both championships is having the best car.\u201d<\/p>\n Madeline Coleman<\/p>\n Has Lewis Hamilton lost his pace, or is he struggling to adjust to the Ferrari? Or a bit of both? I thought his pitting strategy was going to lead to an interesting showdown between him and Charles Leclerc, but it never came.\u00a0 \u2014 Daniel W.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lewis Hamilton\u2019s up-and-down start to life with Ferrari continued in Japan as he qualified eighth and crossed the line seventh, only making up a place on Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar during the race. He didn\u2019t have Leclerc\u2019s pace through the weekend, trailing by three-tenths in qualifying. As Daniel notes, the longer first stint on the inverse tire strategy didn\u2019t pay off to try and close the gap with a tire delta late on, as the race\u2019s low tire degradation significantly reduced this possibility.<\/p>\n Hamilton made some interesting comments post-race, saying he hoped for \u201cpositive changes\u201d in the coming races after claiming a difference had been spotted between the two Ferrari cars.<\/p>\n \u201cThrough the first three races, there\u2019s been a bit of a deficit between both sides of the garage on an element of the car, on my side, something underperforming,\u201d Hamilton told reporters. \u201cWith what I had, that\u2019s the best result I could get.\u201d He went on to say that Ferrari was \u201cclearly\u201d the fourth-fastest team at the moment.<\/p>\n The adjustment period would always be a challenge, and Hamilton knows that. The China sprint race victory proved that, when everything clicks, Hamilton can still cut it as one of the quickest drivers on the grid. So it\u2019s not a case of him losing his pace at all. It\u2019ll just take a bit longer, especially if that \u201cdeficit\u201d he referred to between the two cars goes to explain why he trailed Leclerc at Suzuka.<\/p>\n Luke Smith<\/p>\n Leclerc beat both Mercedes cars at Suzuka, but was a long way off the podium battle ahead (Mark Thompson\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Why is Ferrari off to an underwhelming start? The momentum they finished the end of last year with is completely gone and it seems strange that they aren\u2019t competing more than they currently are. \u2014 Jeremy Grafton R.<\/strong><\/p>\n Of the leading teams, Ferrari has arguably made the most disappointing start to this season. Hamilton\u2019s post-race comments emphasize that it\u2019s the fourth-quickest team at the moment, lacking the pace of McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a definite step backward considering how Ferrari ended last year, when it narrowly missed out on the constructors\u2019 championship to McLaren. The margins between the leading teams are now so razor-thin that if you\u2019re even a little bit off the pace, it\u2019s hard to get into contention properly. And there is clearly a lot of good in the Ferrari car, as evidenced by Hamilton\u2019s sprint success in China. Leclerc was also able to beat both Mercedes cars at Suzuka.<\/p>\n The Ferrari does seem incredibly setup sensitive at the moment, with a narrow window to unlock optimum performance. Reflecting on China, Hamilton told us on Thursday that if Ferrari had left the car setup alone after the sprint, instead of making some changes to try and make a step forward, he\u2019d likely have qualified in the top three instead of winding up fifth on the grid. He also called it \u201cfascinating\u201c how Leclerc could go quicker than him in the race in China despite losing his front wing endplate. Both cars were ultimately disqualified from that race due to separate technical infringements.<\/p>\n It\u2019s really a case of Ferrari not quite getting everything out of the SF-25 car yet, lacking McLaren\u2019s consistent strength or Mercedes\u2019 stability. Returning to Bahrain, the site of preseason testing, should offer some decent comparisons and more answers as it looks to get properly into the fight.<\/p>\n Luke Smith<\/p>\n So, as a new fan, are races usually as dull as Japan and China? At least China has the evolving tire strategy to keep things somewhat interesting. \u2014 Jason M.<\/strong><\/p>\n The simple answer is no, they\u2019re not, typically. After the re-surfacing of the much of the asphalt at Suzuka, it went from being a high-degradation to a low-degradation track, which led to a one-stop race as the tires weren\u2019t degrading much. Stella said at one point during his post-race media session on Sunday, \u201cThe tires don\u2019t almost degrade at all from one lap to the other. We kept seeing purple sectors and purple laps (indicating fastest times being set by drivers) until the final lap.\u201d Thus, there was hardly any strategic variance. Suzuka is traditionally a track that is difficult to overtake around, and its layout makes it difficult to follow closely.<\/p>\n But F1\u2019s dirty air problem is also significantly worse this year. Dirty air refers to the turbulent air that comes off the rear of a car ahead, which can make it hard to overtake as chasing drivers struggle to control their cars normally in the unstable air. This, in turn, means their tires do wear more, even on low-degradation tracks such as this. The current regulations introduced in 2022 aimed to help close the performance gap and improve overtaking opportunities. The ground-effect aerodynamic operation these cars use was supposed to reduce dirty air and it initially was an improvement. But after four years, the cars struggle to close in on the driver ahead as the teams have fitted ever more sophisticated aerodynamic parts. The more complex an aero part, the more dirty air to produces, as well as making an individual car faster in clean air.<\/p>\n \u201cLong, full, not much happening,\u201d Nico H\u00fclkenberg said Sunday after finishing the race 16th and back where he started. \u201cI spent all my race in traffic too, and it\u2019s not that fun looking at someone\u2019s rear wing and the DRS. It\u2019s so difficult with these cars. The dirty air effect, I think, year-on-year, it gets a little bit worse. And now with the new (asphalt) and the low deg, it\u2019s very hard to do anything.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if there was an overtake.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking ahead to the Bahrain GP, this shouldn\u2019t be as much of a concern. It is a track where you can overtake, between multiple DRS zones, long straights and some slow corners, plus the tires degrade significantly on this abrasive track surface, so there should be more action compared to this past weekend in Japan.<\/p>\n Madeline Coleman<\/p>\n (Top photo: Clive Mason\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Japanese Grand Prix marked the start of Formula One\u2019s first tripleheader of the 2025 season, and it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,4979,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-7841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-motorsports","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114313668287161910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2208784890-scaled.jpg\")
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