Verstappen returns to his victorious ways
Max Verstappen won the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix just a fortnight after his nine race winning streak was broken by a rare retirement at the last event in Melbourne.
The Dutchman appeared to be back to his dominant self after finishing 12.5 seconds clear of his second placed Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.
He continues to lead the driver's championship on 77 points, with a gap of 13 to Perez, after Ferrari's Charles Leclerc had taken the runners-up spot following the Melbourne race.
Verstappen said: "I think it was a very, very good win.
"I think we made some good changes to the car before going into qualifying, which then helped today.
"After the first stint, some tiny adjustments were made to the car and that helped me then to feel even more comfortable and whenever I needed to go faster, I could.
"Whenever I needed to look after my tyres, I could, so I think we were very competitive."
Williams are in trouble… again
The race was halted on the opening lap after a collision between Williams' Alexander Albon and Racing Bulls' Daniel Ricciardo.
Ricciardo appeared not to see his competitor approaching on his outside and thus made contact when he tried to claim the racing line.
Both were sent into the barriers with terminal consequences to their race and the red flag was brought out to conduct barrier repairs at the scene of the accident.
Ricciardo said: “I watched his onboard.
“I don’t even know if he wanted to be there, but his traction was so much better on the soft that he was like, well, there’s space until there wasn’t.
“I didn’t see him but honestly, I always assume maybe someone is there.
“It’s lap one, so I never tried to use the full width of the track and be completely ignorant, but I guess there was not enough room.”
Albon said: “Just one of them things; he didn’t see me, I tried to back out of it last minute.
“There was a moment where I realised, he hasn’t seen me here and the way he’s pulling across...It’s tricky.
“I hit the brakes and tried to get out of it, but we were almost too far alongside him that, as I backed out of it, he was still coming across, and I couldn’t avoid this.
“It’s not what we want and it’s no secret that we are having a tough time with it now with the parts we’ve got.
“This is going to hurt us for sure.”
Williams will continue to struggle as they still do not have a spare chassis, and the one Albon crashed may be beyond repair.
We may see another race where they enter only one car, and they may leave Logan Sargeant without a chassis for the second time this season.
Tsunoda becomes a home hero – and (potentially) saves his seat
Racing Bulls' Yuki Tsunoda scored the first points for a Japanese driver at Suzuka since Kamui Kobayashi did so for Sauber in 2012.
He edged out his teammate Ricciardo to get into Q3 on Saturday then in the race valiantly fought to tenth while his Australian teammate crashed on the first lap with Alex Albon.
This undoubtedly increases Tsunoda's stock as the Red Bull junior team's drivers have come under fire for supposedly wasting seats that could be given to more deserving candidates.
His current and previous teammates Ricciardo and Nyck de Vries could not perform despite having whelms of experience and accolades more than Yuki.
This performance may continue to consolidate the theory that VCARB will drop Ricciardo for next season in place of Liam Lawson.
Lawson impressed last season when he substituted for the Australian for two races while he was recovering from injury, scoring impressive points in Singapore.
For many experts and fans alike, it would be a fool's errand not to place the Kiwi in the 2025 seat, as Ricciardo has done nothing spectacular since his F1 return in mid-2023.
Tsunoda may have saved his chances of staying in F1 into 2025 ahead of rumours he'll move to Aston Martin for 2026.
Sauber and Alpine continue to struggle
Along with Williams, two other teams have struggled to get off the ground in 2024, and their woes continued in Suzuka.
Sauber have suffered from pit stop problems in every race, and this weekend their drivers had to wait up to five seconds to have their tyres changed.
Zhou Guanyu had to retire with a terminal gearbox issue on lap 12, which added to the team’s despair.
The other outfit that has performed badly so far this season is Alpine, and they continued this form by finishing 15th and 16th, only beating Logan Sargeant on the road.
Their car is abysmal considering they are a works operation with everything designed in-house, either at the UK base in Enstone or the engine factory in Viry, France.
A best result of two 13th places simply isn’t good enough for a team that set out a five-year plan in 2016 to be constructors champions by 2021.
They need to refocus this season or develop next year’s car if they want to salvage any reputation they may wish to have.
