Here’s your Japanese GP debrief!
This weekend has been all about Redbull, starting with Yuki Tsunoda’s first race in the RB21 after an early-season promotion from their junior team. Although he failed to score points, a P12 finish is an improvement on Lawson’s DNF and P15 finish (though he was moved up to P12 after the triple disqualification in China), and his free practice results definitely showed promise. Yuki was also voted driver of the day- not my personal pick, but good for him! Redbull also sported their gorgeous White Bull livery this weekend:
Did I keep getting it mixed up with the Haas cars? Yes. And it was very confusing.
The most important thing for Redbull this weekend was, as it so often is, Max Verstappen. He took pole position in qualifying and converted it to a win in the race, somehow finding pace in a car that hasn’t been looking all that fast. I don’t exactly root for Redbull, but the Dutch national anthem sounds so right at the podium celebration. Maybe its nostalgia, maybe my intense disappointment in Mclaren and the 5am wakeup made me a bit crazy, or maybe it was just actually a great drive from Verstappen.
Speaking of my intense disappointment in Mclaren, I’d like to know exactly what goes through the heads of those papaya-wearing strategists on the pitwall. Oscar Piastri had more pace than Lando Norris and was asking to switch positions, but apparently a switch wasn’t even mentioned to Lando who was out of DRS range behind Verstappen. Obviously, you can’t guarantee that if positions were swapped that Oscar would have 100% been able to get Max, but would it not have been worth a try and then switch back if it didn’t work? If it was the other way around, and Lando was behind Oscar with more pace, would they not have swapped them? And they did this on Oscar’s birthday???? Their strategy was all over the place, and whilst a 2-3 finish isn’t bad by any means, I think they could’ve had a win if they put their heads on straight.
You know who could never, ever disappoint me? Andrea. Kimi. Antonelli. It was another great race for Kimi, another double points finish for Mercedes. After Verstappen and the Mclarens pitted, Kimi became the youngest race leader in F1 history and I literally screamed the whole time. He had Lewis Hamilton behind him though, and it was really weird hearing Peter Bonnington (Lewis’ former race engineer and now Kimi’s) talking about Lewis as a rival after all the time he spent on the radio with Lewis. RIP ‘hammertime”, we miss you dearly. Its especially hard when you hear Lewis’ radio messages with his new race engineer, and they’re not getting on quite as well as he did with Bono. But Kimi is doing so amazingly well with 3 consecutive top-6 finishes and currently being P5 in the WDC standings, and I am very hopeful that we’ll see him on the podium at least once or twice this year as he gets more and more confident and comfortable in the car. Oh, and he also not only won the DHL Fastest Lap, but set the all-time lap record for Suzuka. He is basically the real life Peter Parker- scoring points in Formula 1 every weekend then going back to school on Monday to study for his exams. I’ve been calling him ‘baby GOAT’, or ‘GOAT-in-training’, but I think I might start calling him Spiderman too.
The race itself was mostly very boring, with very few overtakes, no retirements, no safety cars, no rain, just a few entertaining radio messages from Alex Albon.
Other notable goings-on: the grass on the side of the track catching fire multiple times and causing 5 red flags across practice and qualifying, Carlos Sainz being fined for being late to the national anthem after having ‘stomach problems’, Lando going off into the grass as he exited the pitlane and claiming Verstappen pushed him off, Verstappen then calling the Mclaren a ‘very expensive lawnmower’ in the cooldown room, and both of them saying in the post-race press conference that Lando was just making sure the grass was cut nicely. Also, Isack Hadjar scored his first points for Racing Bulls, Charles Leclerc made his 150th Grand Prix start, Fernando Alonso finished the race after 2 DNFs in 2 races (thank god), and Alex Albon once again scored points for Williams and now splits the Ferraris in P7 in the WDC standings.
Here are some memes that made me giggle:
Next week, we go to Bahrain! Much warmer conditions and a very different track will hopefully provide an entertaining race, and a race at a much more sociable time of day than the first 3 of the season.
formula evie 
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