You’d have got long odds tipping a Max Verstappen victory at Suzuka before the Japanese Grand Prix weekend got underway.
You’d probably still have got those same long odds halfway through Q3, when he was still well adrift of the McLaren drivers on single-lap pace.
But for the fourth time in a row there was the Dutchman mounting the top step in Japan, having beaten the faster Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to establish his championship challenge.
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And wasn’t he pleased about it.
“I’m very happy with what I’m doing,” Verstappen told Dutch TV station ViaPlay.
“I don’t even want to think about if I’d been in that other car [McLaren]. Then you wouldn’t have seen me!”
It was a naked bit of self-aggrandisement to Verstappen’s friendly home media.
But can you honestly say he was wrong?
The McLaren car was clearly faster in qualifying but both drivers made small but critical errors that allowed Verstappen to storm through with a sumptuous lap.
The McLaren cars were also faster in the race, but overtaking is almost impossible in Suzuka these days, and the team refused to swap drivers to see if Piastri could have a better crack than Norris at the lead, allowing Verstappen to claim victory with a faultless performance.
All things being equal, a McLaren driver should have won this race.
But Verstappen has a habit of making the sport appear unequal in his favour.
“It’s not been the easiest start to the year for us,” he said. “We are not where we want to be in terms of performance, I think that’s no secret.
“But this weekend has been really, really nice. Sometimes you have those kinds of moments where you get some really great laps out of it, and luckily also the balance got a bit more together throughout that qualifying.
“We just have to keep on working. It’s nice, but … I just focus on my own performances and just keep working, keep grinding.”
So given Red Bull Racing’s difficulties — difficulties that forced a drive change after two races and that had Yuki Tsunoda qualifying and finishing outside the 10 in Japan — how did McLaren manage to fumble its shot at scoring a third straight victory for the first time since the middle of 2012, and what does it mean for this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix?
Ocon helps Doohan after Japanese GP | 00:31
‘I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED OLD-STYLE SUZUKA…’
The high-speed Suzuka layout has well suited McLaren’s cars since its 2023 resurgence. It was particularly good at the track that season, when Piastri scored his first grand prix podium.
It was the same story at Suzuka this year. Adding up McLaren’s three best sector times and comparing the result to the same for Red Bull Racing shows the former had an almost quarter-second theoretical advantage.
But those small qualifying mistakes by both drivers allowed Verstappen to get ahead.
But while the McLaren car has an inherent pace advantage over a single lap, its race performance is built on excellent tyre wear.
This became clear immediately at the first grand prix of the season, when the MCL39 attracted attention for being able to warm its tyres quickly for a qualifying lap while also being able to treat them well over a race stint.
Treating them well doesn’t just mean that they last longer in the race; it also means that a driver can push harder, extracting more performance over a shorter stint than a rival who has to engage in more management.
Managing Pirelli’s delicate and heat-sensitive tyres is a defining challenge of modern Formula 1. An abrasive surface and high-energy layout have historically put Suzuka at the apex of this challenge.
But not this year.
“With the new tarmac Suzuka has changed the feature of being a high-degradation circuit; it is now very low degradation circuit,” McLaren boss Andrea Stella said. “It was a very easy one-stop and [there were] not many strategic options.
“Once you nail the qualifying laps like Max did yesterday, then it gets a little bit difficult to get out of the rabbit hole.
“Hopefully not all the circuits will be this level of degradation, even because for the spectacle it just creates some processions to some extent.
“Also hopefully at some other circuits we will be in condition to use the full potential of the car, which I think still remains the best car.
“Certainly I would have preferred old-style Suzuka before the resurfacing, because in a situation like that I think we could have exploited the good qualities of our car.
“But when the tyres behave so strongly, basically we have no additional qualities because everyone has very low degradation.”
Low degradation meant McLaren and Red Bull Racing — and everyone else — were able to push pretty much flat-out throughout Sunday.
With nothing but pure performance separating them, neither Norris nor Piastri had the sort of advantage they needed to even think about launching a pass.
Take high tyre wear out of the equation and suddenly Verstappen and his Red Bull Racing car are within reach of top spot.
Max fends off McLaren to claim Japan GP! | 02:21
SO IS McLAREN REALLY VULNERABLE?
There are plenty of circuits where tyre degradation is low, or at least low enough not to be decisive. Street circuits in particular tend not to be degradation-dependent, immediately putting several tracks on the cards as potential vulnerabilities for McLaren.
With 21 grands prix still to run, a McLaren whitewash — as forecast by George Russell — was always going to be unlikely given the variety of tracks still to come.
It’s why McLaren, despite revelling in its status as the quickest team, has also been cautious not to overplay its advantage.
After all, this time last year no-one would have thought Red Bull Racing would find a way to blow what looked like a healthy pace advantage to wind up third in the championship.
Red Bull Racing’s failed title defence of 2024 will stand for years as a cautionary tale for constructors who start these long seasons with an early lead, and McLaren, which is new to championship contention after its shock upswing of recent years, is keen to avoid the trap.
“We treat Max and Red Bull or like warriors,” Stella said. “[There’s George] Russell, [and] how can you discount [Charles] Leclerc-[Lewis] Hamilton?
“We treat all this certainly within the spectrum of the full season at least until we have stabilised a little bit, because I think at the moment we are still falling within the variability of the circuits.
“Obviously we had Hamilton win in the sprint in China, Russell being competitive in the race in China, here we have Red Bull and Max — I think we’re still in a transient phase.
“We’ll have to see how things settle down.”
Oscar Piastri said it was up to McLaren to make hay while it had its car in a sweet spot and before its rivals started piecing together complete performances regularly.
“Our car is in a very strong place at the moment,” he said. “It’s still got some things that we want to try and improve.
“Obviously I know that Lando’s going to be strong opposition given we’re in the same car, and I know Max is going to be strong opposition given everything he’s achieved in his career.
“It doesn’t take much of a mistake from us — or certainly from myself — to let the others in.
“Mercedes looked very threatening at times this weekend., and I think people forget that Charles’s race in China he did with essentially half a front wing. I think if anyone else had tried to do the race he did in China, they would have had to box pretty quickly.
“So I think we have a small advantage, but I think this weekend has really shown that any small mistake and there’s a lot of competition there to capitalise.”
Norris summed up the situation succinctly.
“At the minute I think McLaren, Red Bull, and probably between us three [with Verstappen], we’re doing a better job than the rest,” he said.
Drivers’ funny reaction to ‘highlights’ | 01:40
‘MAX ELEVATES THE GAME’
Inherent in Norris’s assessment of course is that every other team could do a better job, and you’d be brave to bet Ferrari under manager Frédéric Vasseur or Mercedes with its still recent history of title success will be unable to put the pieces together before the end of the year.
It’s why the tiny mistakes that contributed to McLaren’s Japan defeat in the face of Verstappen’s excellence can’t be written off as totally insignificant.
There’s no guarantee that points lost today can be won back tomorrow.
“I’m sure our two drivers will have commented themselves that their qualifying laps were not the best laps in qualifying in their careers,” Stella said.
“Clearly when Max elevates the game so much you need to nail laps in qualifying and you need to bring home any possible millisecond, because [in qualifying] it was indeed a matter of milliseconds, with 0.044 seconds between P3 and P1.
“I think when it’s a matter of milliseconds everyone always retains the possibility to say, ‘I could have done better here and there’ but this is a matter of milliseconds.
“I think to win races like this you need perfect execution.
“We know that to beat Max and Red Bull we need to operate at the highest standards but also we need to operate consistently.”
The challenge of trying to win the Japanese Grand Prix with an imperfect performance underlined McLaren’s structured approach to the championship: to explicitly target the constructors championship first and then assess its drivers title hopes.
“We talk about this every Thursday and every Sunday of every single race weekend,” he said. “We are here, first of all, to beat the other teams and put McLaren in a very strong position, and when McLaren is in a strong position, then it’s the best position for the two drivers to pursue their aspirations. This is very clear to the team, very clear to the drivers.
“Obviously when you have these indications coming from the track, they may be, if anything, reinforcing the message that we do have to keep working well together, because before it becomes internal business only, I think there’s quite a lot of work to do to clear some of the competitors.”
But it’s also clear McLaren is confident it’s on the right path.
“I think definitely the most important condition to pursue both championships is having the best car,” he said. “It’s important that when we are not in a condition to win we keep racing in a robust way — if you can’t win, finish on the podium — and in the long term if you keep performing like this, I think this will be rewarding.
“I think Max at the moment is somehow making the difference himself, but it’s very difficult to keep up for 24 events in a season if you don’t have the best car.”
Norris nearly eats dirt after pit drama | 01:31
BAHRAIN WILL BE A MAJOR INDICATOR
This weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix stands as an important indicator for the season form guide and will go some way to validating — or not — that confidence.
For one, Sakhir is where pre-season testing took place. That’s an extra three days of information with which the teams and drivers will be able to tackle the race. The result will be representative.
But for McLaren in particular it will be a telling event.
The Bahrain International Circuit has always been a difficult track for McLaren. Despite being partly owned by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, its best finish at the circuit is a single second place way back in 2007.
It’s failed to score with both cars twice in the last three seasons.
On paper the layout shouldn’t suit the car this year, with no real high-speed corners to rely on.
But Bahrain is one of the toughest races on the tyres.
The old asphalt is extremely abrasive, and braking and traction are critical to lap time.
If McLaren’s advantage on tyre wear is going to be restored anywhere, it’ll be this weekend.
If the team can romp away with pole and victory this weekend, the pre-Japan order will have been restored.
Struggle to seal the deal and suddenly it’ll feel like the game has changed.