Japanese Grand Prix Review

Max Verstappen takes his second world championship at a rain-soaked Japanese grand prix where the legendary track Suzuka returns to the F1 calendar.

The Dutchman finished ahead of his teammate Sergio Pérez too take a dominant victory, where he finished more than 10 seconds up the road.

The weather put a halt to the race after it was red flagged this was due to visibility become so poor due to spray from the other cars.

Pierre Gasly had a close encounter with a recovery vehicle on the track during red flag conditions.

It was a hectic weekend in Japan. It was a historic weekend for Verstappen and Red Bull. Where they took their second drivers’ championship together. Verstappen led from start to finish in a short race due to the weather.

The story of the race was all about being on the right tyre at the right time. The evidence for this is Sebastian Vettel getting on the intermediate tyres early. He gained a lot of positions. Whereas drivers like Fernando Alonso and Mick Schumacher stayed on the full wets. This resulted in the losing out on positions due to lack of grip.

The driver of the day for me was Vettel. This is because he had an excellent qualifying session that saw him qualify in ninth. Vettel lost out on the position after contact with Alonso on the opening lap which saw him drop down the order. When the race restarted Vettel was one of the first drivers to switch to the inters. This saw him catapult up the order, up into sixth position. It was far from an easy race for the four-time world champion. The reason for this is that Vettel had to hold off Alonso for much of the race.

One of the more controversial moments of the race was when a safety recovery vice made its way on the track. The reason why it made it unsafe was that there was still a car on track when the vehicle came out. It was Gasly who was most aggrieved by this because he was the driver who was most at risk. This is because he couldn’t see the vehicle in the conditions. The last point I will make on this that a similar situation happened in 2014 but that ended in a life being lost.

Next, we travel state side to Circuit of the Americas track in Austin Texas.