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Japanese GP
2018 Formula 1 Japanese GP
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Japanese GP
Japanese Grand Prix race day
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Radio Comms
"The left front's taken a pretty big hit after the safety car," reports Ricciardo. Red Bull reassures him that Raikkonen behind has had the same trouble.
Bottas and Verstappen successfully lap Ericsson's Sauber into the chicane. The Mercedes' straightline speed advantage means Verstappen will have to do something creative to get past.
Verstappen is now just half a second behind Bottas, who seems to be in real tyre trouble and has fallen 9s away from race-leading team-mate Hamilton.
Radio Comms
Alonso, who is 14th, claims he lost four seconds while being lapped by Bottas and Verstappen.
Radio Comms
"Gap to Perez is 1.7s, let's stay within 5s in case he gets a penalty," Grosjean is told. He curtly responds "yeah, we need to get the position now."
Stopwatch
Ricciardo has just set a new fastest race lap too, can he join team-mate Verstappen's battle with Bottas? He's 4.3s behind.
Radio Comms
Perez got around the Haas at the chicane, with Grosjean immediately on the radio (quelle surprise) to insist he had stuck to the delta under the VSC and deserves the place back.
Bottas locks up into the hairpin and runs wide as he laps Alonso, and that allows Verstappen to get very, very close to him...
Perez has, somewhere, managed to get by Grosjean for seventh.
Radio Comms
"It's getting a bit rough close to the limiter," Verstappen tells Red Bull as he shadows Bottas.
Pit stop
Williams decided to pit Sirotkin and Stroll again and has fitted both with supersofts.
Verstappen is now under a second behind Bottas with 12 laps left.
Green flag
But both Hamilton and Bottas stay out as the VSC ends.
Mercedes looks like it's making a pitstop...
Crash
Replays show the Sauber simply ran wide out off Denger 1 into the gravel.
Yellow flag
The virtual safety car is called while Leclerc is retrieved.
Crash
"Something broke," says Leclerc, who has now pulled over to the side of the road.
Verstappen is now under 2s behind Bottas as they nip between the traffic.
Crash
Leclerc has gone off at Degner 2 and is rejoining very gingerly.
Crash
Hulkenberg is in the pits for a second time, but has been wheeled back into the Renault garage.
Verstappen has been quizzing Red Bull in depth about tyre compounds' wear life, as his soft-shod Red Bull keeps on edging closer to Bottas's medium-shod Mercedes. That gap is just 2.2s now.
Radio Comms
"Have you gone for a break, Bono? Because I haven't had an update in a while," asks Hamilton of his engineer. "I'm back now, Lewis," replies Pete Bonnington. Maybe there wasn't much to say as his driver dominates.
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Pit stop
Good timing. Leclerc comes in for a second stop and swaps back to softs.
Gasly clears Leclerc for 10th into the chicane. Big blister marks on the Sauber's left-rear medium tyre now.
With no more pitstops expected barring sudden surprise tyre collapsing, Vettel's only hope of getting higher than sixth is either trouble ahead or Ferrari asking Raikkonen to dramatically slow.
Vettel picks off Grosjean into Spoon, so is now back up to sixth. He's 40 seconds behind Raikkonen, though, so that might be the extent of his recovery.
The Red Bulls are lapping nearly a second quicker than the Mercedes now, but this is surely a case of the champion team just controlling the pace with 19 laps left.
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Stopwatch
Now in clear-ish air, Vettel sets a new fastest lap of the race - a 1m33.243s.
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Vettel has now passed the leading Force India of Perez and puts in a fastest first sector of all for good measure. He's now seventh.
Good move from Gasly around the outside of Ericsson on the run to Turn 1. That promotes him to 11th after Sainz's stop.
Pit stop
Sainz, who was the only driver yet to pit, now comes in from sixth to make his stop.
Gasly's team-mate Brendon Hartley has fared even worse, and is down in 16th having started sixth.
Gasly has pitted and is going to have to perform similar overtaking feats to the Force Indias to work his way back up the order. He's back out in 13th on softs.
Vettel gets the better of the squabbling Leclerc and Ocon and is up to ninth.
Information
While the midfield is providing plenty of wild racing, it's pretty static up front: 1 Hamilton; 2 Bottas +5.5s; 3 Verstappen +13.2s; 4 Ricciardo +16.6s; 5 Raikkonen +21.1s
Haas just gets Grosjean back out in front of Perez! A lap under the wing of Leclerc's Sauber hampered the Force India driver's charge and, as he pulled out of the slipstream on the run to Turn 1, Grosjean emerged from the pits to preserve his Class B lead.
By: Geoff Creighton
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