While Max remains in a league of his own, Mark Hughes turns his attention to more interesting matters – the battle for second
As the Max Verstappen/Red Bull steamroller of the world championship continues, the intrigue is all about what is going on behind. Behind Verstappen on track and behind the scenes at Red Bull.
The prospect of Verstappen leaving the team has receded somewhat. Following his comments earlier in the year that he’d be leaving if Helmut Marko was no longer there, and with the subsequent confirmation that Marko is staying, so Verstappen has said he “is going nowhere”. But as speculation remains about the partnership’s future, so it continues its assault on the Formula 1 record books. As F1 moved from Australia to Asia for the Japanese and Chinese races, that domination looked unassailable.
Just like last year when Verstappen arrived in Suzuka on the back of a rare defeat (at the hand of Carlos Sainz again), he hit back very hard. Just like last year, he was 20sec clear of the best non-Red Bull (Sainz) at the flag. This time he had his team-mate Sergio Pérez cushioning him from the others.
It wasn’t a very complex race. The performance hierarchy was very clear and the cars ultimately settled down into that order. But Lando Norris had overqualified the McLaren, starting from third on the grid ahead of Sainz’s Ferrari, a position it maintained down to the first corner, as Verstappen eased himself clear of Pérez at the front. In fact this all happened twice, for the first race was red-flagged almost immediately following a heavy crash between Daniel Ricciardo’s RB and Alex Albon’s Williams, which took them both out.
Because this is a track where you need a lap time advantage of around 1sec to be able to overtake, Sainz was unable to find a way past Norris in the first stint despite being clearly quicker. In this way Norris just made things even easier for the Red Bull pair, allowing them to ease out a gap without having to overstress their tyres, which degrade here at a very high rate.
The stalemate was broken by Sainz applying undercut pressure on Norris as the window opened for the first pitstops of this two-stop race. With Norris unable to get free of the Ferrari, McLaren brought him in as early as lap 11 to defend from the threat. That jumped him temporarily ahead of Sainz and Pérez, as they stayed out longer on their original
