So Singapore became just a bad memory, a flaw within a diamond of a season. Bumpy tracks demanding big ride heights lose it more downforce than the others. Short corners don’t allow its front tyres to come quickly up to temperature. Set-up reactions trying to get them out of that hole had only made it worse. They’d endured all that, as well as the suggestions the loss of form was surely to do with the stricter application of technical directives concerning flexible bodywork. Dominating Suzuka would put paid to those suggestions.
Verstappen’s first flying lap, on the hard tyres, on Friday FP1 was 1.3sec faster than the best of medium-shod competition. He dominated every session thereafter and his pole was 0.6sec clear. It was a thing of beauty.
Most of his advantage came in the high-speed interconnected sweeps of the Esses which comprise most of sector 1. The Ferrari would lose around 0.7sec in that sector alone, the Mercedes even more. The McLaren, though, was comparably fast through there but would lose out in the slow parts — the hairpin and chicane.
Norris won the battle of the two McLarens
Clive Mason/Getty Images
But McLaren was best of the rest, quite convincingly so. Rookie Oscar Piastri starred by qualifying alongside Verstappen on the front row and edging out team-mate Lando Norris by a few hundredths. They almost combined to mug him into the first corner too, both getting off the line better, Piastri aiming for his inside, Verstappen leaning across on him, only for Norris then to sweep past them both on the outside, but with the Red Bull prevailing on the corner exit.
From there, Verstappen was able to set about achieving his target of a 20sec winning margin in what was set to be a two-stop race. Degradation rates were high, but Verstappen was able to be kind to the tyres thanks to the Red Bull’s big downforce. But much as it’s a superior car, it requires a Verstappen to access its best, something Sergio Perez underscored again by qualifying only fifth, putting him in the part of the grid where trouble brewed. After two wheel-rubbing incidents with Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes off the line he was in the pits for a new wing on lap two and, in attempting to recover from that, locked up and hit Kevin Magnussen, damaging the car again and causing a VSC. He was retired from the race, then unretired in order to take the 5sec penalty for causing the K Mag accident (so as to avoid a grid drop next time out), then retired again… A bizarre distraction while the sister car took the field apart.
