The three factors behind Verstappen overturning Perez's real Suzuka advantage

The story of the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix was one of changing seasons. Just six months ago, Formula 1 arrived at Suzuka under hot, blazing skies of the mid-autumn climate in the north-western Pacific region. Last weekend, it was back for the first Japanese GP to take place in the spring. That meant cooler conditions and a potentially very different race.

Once again last weekend, Max Verstappen emerged victorious. But there was nevertheless change in the air filtering through with charming pieces of cherry blossom F1 machines haven’t passed before here.

For this wasn’t a crushingly dominant display from the Dutchman alone at Red Bull this time, F1 again having arrived at Suzuka following a Carlos Sainz triumph for Ferrari, just as was the case after the Singapore GP in 2023. This time, Sergio Perez made it an all-Red Bull front row and race 1-2. And Perez was a threat to Verstappen across the whole 2024 event. One that even seemed to have a season pass every day.

On Friday it was a touch of winter returning – FP1 chilly and blustery as Verstappen led Perez by 0.181 seconds, then the afternoon running washed out by constant drizzle and even colder temperatures. Saturday therefore felt like a spring breakthrough as the sun finally reappeared, before major race day temperature rises in strong sunshine brought a summer feel to this brilliantly brutal, rough-and-ready venue.

Ultimately, F1’s history books will record this as yet another Verstappen walkover given his 12.5s margin of victory over Perez, and the opposition basically just as far behind as was the case last year. But the seeds of it as a recovery journey were planted during the ‘spring’ of Saturday.

And it was here that Perez actually held a very real advantage, which had Verstappen concerned. “So far, I haven't been happy with my long runs,” he said after qualifying. “I think the pace wasn't what I would have liked [in FP3]. So, it's a bit of a question mark going into [the race]…

“Our race pace is still not too bad, but it's not how I have been feeling in some of the races this year, last year. As comfortable, let's say, like that.”

At this stage, Verstappen was also talking up Ferrari’s long-run potential – something Red Bull had been doing since FP1, when its motorsport advisor Helmut Marko called Charles Leclerc’s performance there “a bit irritating”.

During the colder conditions in practice, Ferrari offered the promise of a threat to Red Bull

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

With FP2 effectively lost, final practice played out rather differently to normal. The teams, generally, were forced to eschew the multiple qualifying simulation runs they normally complete at this stage, given the lack of representative long running completed to this point. Instead, once the initial install running had been accomplished, they switched to lengthy race pace simulations. Here, Red Bull and Ferrari mirrored each other exactly, both focusing on only the medium tyres over similar stint lengths.

Ferrari led the way with a best average of 1m36.204s, via Leclerc. This was a massive 0.482s better than Red Bull’s leading time, which suggested rather differing fuel loads were at play. Although Verstappen claimed “Ferrari, they look very comfortable” based on this display, Sainz was soon scotching hopes of a second Scuderia upset in two races.

“[Our long runs] are not better,” he said. “It's just, I think, probably we are a bit lighter. They always run really slow on Fridays, it always looks like we are gonna beat them on Sunday, and then they put 20 seconds on us. I think they sandbag a bit on the long runs because they know it's their strength.”

Having encountered more rear sliding in Verstappen’s FP3 long run Red Bull’s efforts were concentrated on making its car balance more towards understeer by reducing front wing angle

But what could not be denied for Verstappen and Red Bull was that, for once, he wasn’t its leading driver in a vital aspect. That best FP3 long-run average had actually come from Perez – his 1m36.686s average shading Verstappen’s by 0.122s. Perez started off quicker and maintained that edge, with Verstappen suffering notably more degradation.

“I'm just not very happy with myself, with how my long run was,” Verstappen explained. “So then, actually everyone else looks a bit better.”

But even as he was speaking there in the post-qualifying press conference, two of three factors that would ultimately tilt Sunday’s race in Verstappen’s favour were already involved.

The first was how Red Bull “did change the car around and that then just gave me more grip”, per Verstappen, in terms of its post-FP3 set-up work. With the teams locked in on downforce packages by this technical, challenging course – where aerodynamic efficiency is rewarded – this concentrated on aero balance adjustments via front wing flap angle tweaking.

Having encountered more rear sliding in Verstappen’s FP3 long run – hence his extra degradation at this tricky track for rear tyres – Red Bull’s efforts were concentrated on making its car balance more towards understeer by reducing front wing angle.

Verstappen wasn't comfortable with the set-up of his Red Bull, but would be thankful to his team later in the weekend

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

The extra grip of the soft tyres the team had preserved by not running at all in FP2 overrode pretty much everything come qualifying. And this is where the second important factor to Verstappen’s 57th F1 career win and third in succession at Suzuka came in.

In topping qualifying against the stiff test Perez provided – around some inconsistent swings from the Mexican, mainly in Q1 and on the first Q3 runs – Verstappen locked in a critical advantage for succeeding at Suzuka. This is how the dirty air factor would massively impact a chasing rival – increasing rear sliding and therefore adding thermal degradation.

But Verstappen had to protect that hard-won advantage at the start. Twice, in fact.

When the lights went out initially, Verstappen was utterly untroubled on the downhill run to Suzuka’s famous opening turns. Perez launched well enough, but not enough to make any inroads into his team-mate’s lead from pole. And any thoughts Perez had about how to go about eroding that were swiftly put on hold.

In the pack behind on the run to Turn 3 at the start of the Esses complex, Daniel Ricciardo – along with his RB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, rather swamped having started on medium tyres and with others gaining having taken the softs – was between Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and Williams driver Alex Albon. Except Ricciardo was only seemingly aware of Stroll’s position – behind on his inside. With this in mind, Ricciardo swung across to the outside on the approach the left-hander, which left Albon with nowhere to go. Albon hit the brakes as he recognised the trouble they were in, but there wasn’t enough time or space left to avoid what was coming.

The contact spun Ricciardo around and pitched both him and Albon into the gravel, then rapidly into the tyre barriers on the outside. As these would need to be rebuilt before any more racing could take place – let alone the need to ensure the two drivers were unhurt, which they were – the red flags were quickly flying.

Verstappen therefore led the pack into the pits, where attentions turned to tyre strategy changes and car balance shifts, now the parc ferme restrictions had elapsed.

Ricciardo and Albon clash to trigger the first-lap red flag

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

On the tyre front, the Red Bull pair remained on the mediums with which they had taken the first start – as did Lando Norris in third. Behind the McLaren, Ferrari put Sainz onto its second of two remaining new sets of mediums and did likewise with Leclerc further back in the pack.

For both Verstappen and Perez, per Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, “the red flag helped them reset their front wings after they had probably over-compensated” with those post-FP3 adjustments.

But even so, the focus here for the leader still wasn’t settled, as Marko revealed that during the red flag stoppage, “there was a very long discussion before about how many clicks of the front wing we had to change”.

The impact of this would be felt later, but first Verstappen had to survive another “critical bit: to stay ahead” at the second start. Perez felt he got away “a little bit better, but just not enough to get Max”. Indeed, the chasing RB20 did have a momentum advantage leaving the line, and so this time Verstappen chopped more aggressively across to his right to cover off any faint threat of intra-team attack.

"We got caught out with the increase of temperature. With the balance, we just couldn't get on top of that in the first stint, which meant that the degradation was a little bit higher" Sergio Perez

By the end of lap three of 53, Verstappen had scampered to a 0.991s advantage. Perez did enough to keep within DRS range when it was activated on the second lap post-restart – lap four.

But that was as close as it got from Perez because, after a single DRS activation on lap five, he dropped back to 1.2s adrift the next time by the pits. Furthermore, on lap six, he slipped wide out of Degner 2 and lost nearly a second.

“It was quite a tricky corner,” said Perez. “I just went in over the kerb and I was just hoping to not pick up damage because it's so easy with these floors to go off and have damage. As far as I know, we didn't have any.

“I just understeered wide and went over the kerb. Once you are at the top of the kerb, it's game over. You just have to let the car roll, go over it – because it's better to be over than on top of it. I obviously picked up a lot of dirt on my tyres, which took a lap or two to really clean up, and I lost a couple of seconds with that.”

Perez made a better getaway at the restart but it still wasn't enough to take the lead off Verstappen

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Indeed, by lap 10 Verstappen’s advantage had grown to nearly 3s. And he carried on extending it to a maximum of 5.1s over the rest of the first stint. For the leaders, this ended on lap 15, when Perez pitted for another new set of mediums. The gap Verstappen had built was decisive for Red Bull pitting its second driver first, given the considerable power of the undercut at Suzuka.

On his losses early in the race, Perez brought the focus back to the changing weather.

“Unfortunately, I think we got caught out with the increase of temperature,” he explained of the track temperatures climbing 12C from qualifying to a race peak of 39C. “With the balance, we just couldn't get on top of that in the first stint, which meant that the degradation was a little bit higher.”

Horner felt “conditions maybe being a bit warmer, wasn't a disadvantage for us” – but this is relative to how the RB20 still has a major advantage in tyre preservation through a thermal deg contest. For its drivers, the added heat was still a big challenge even in the season’s best car.

“In general, everything is a little bit more difficult,” said Verstappen. “When it gets warmer, you have a bit less grip. The first few laps you’re really trying to adapt to that. I think overall it worked out well for us. But, yeah, it's always a bit more tricky when suddenly the whole weekend you've done a certain temperature and then suddenly it goes up a bit.”

And this is the third critical factor in completing Verstappen’s turnaround from what was a very real FP3 race-pace struggle. When the mercury rises, it adds an extra premium to his tyre management prowess compared to Perez. And he used it to excellent effect.

Not that things couldn’t still be better for Verstappen, who in a lap nine exchange with race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase that Marko labelled “the old married couple coming out again”, asked for “one or two clicks” less in terms of yet again adjusting his front wing angle at his first stop. This would be for more mediums.

He emerged from this in second place, behind Leclerc. Unlike in the 2023 race, when Verstappen only failed to lead a handful of laps after his first pitstop, this time he had to climb back to his finally well-established lead due to the field compressing in 2024 combining with Ferrari’s tactical excellence last Sunday.

Leclerc led for a handful of laps using a bold one-stop strategy

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“In clean air, the optimum was two stops,” claimed Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur. But, with Leclerc starting down in eighth due to his second underwhelming qualifying performance in a row, “to save track position and to avoid being in the fight, for Charles, the best one was to do one stop”, per Vasseur again. And so, Ferrari switched him from its ‘Plan A’ initial two-stop approach to its ‘Plan C’ alternative.

“The difference was not mega but it's depending on your position on track,” Vasseur added. “It's probably a bit more difficult when you have to do one stop because you have to keep everything under control and you have always the temptation to push a little bit more. But he did it very well.”

Leclerc initially held a 3.7s advantage at the end of Verstappen’s out-lap, by which point Perez, having dropped back from the leader and only been 3.1s ahead of Norris when the McLaren became the first of the frontrunners to stop on lap 11, was now chasing the Briton. He’d already passed Lewis Hamilton with a lap-17 blast to 130R’s inside, then he faced five tours getting on terms with Norris and dispatching him with a controlled move on the inside line at the Casio Triangle chicane on lap 22. This was one tour after Verstappen had easily got Leclerc with DRS to Turn 1 on the racing line, while the Ferrari jinked right.

Leclerc gamely hung on ahead of Perez but, on lap 26, a similar Degner 2 exit slip wide to the one his rival had made earlier allowed the Red Bull by the Ferrari.

"The car just got better and better for me throughout the race" Max Verstappen

The gap between the leaders was now 10s, but the middle stint then played out in a similar fashion to the first once the early action was dealt with.

This was that Verstappen gradually extended his lead by another 1.5s between the time he regained first place and when Perez stopped again at the end of the 33rd tour.

“The car just got better and better for me throughout the race,” Verstappen said, feeling the arrival of late cloud cover had boosted him further as it gave the tyres a break.

The final stint was familiar for the Red Bull pair. Perez had again been undercut by Norris, but this time he only had to erase a 0.4s deficit and he was ahead again two laps after his second service. Next up was Leclerc, who Perez despatched at Turn 1 just as swiftly on lap 36.

The undercut proved powerful but it wasn't enough to trouble a Red Bull 1-2

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

The red and orange drivers had become part of the race’s narrative thanks to Ferrari’s one-stop tactic.

Just as Leclerc pitted after his Degner slip had allowed Perez by on lap 26, McLaren was calling Norris in on the same tour for his second stop – wary of the threat of George Russell after Mercedes had been able to run a much longer first stint thanks to taking hard tyres during the red flag. Here McLaren was hoping to avoid losing time if he slipped ahead temporarily early in Norris’s final stint.

When Leclerc emerged from the pits ahead of Norris, the pair were racing to the end and the faster Ferrari had the advantage – something embellished by Norris indeed having to slip past Russell on lap 28.

Sainz had by this time become a factor in the start of Verstappen’s final stint, as Ferrari had left him out on a longer middle stint of the typical two-stopper he’d remained on once McLaren had gone aggressive in stopping Norris early way back in the opening phase post-restart.

The Spaniard had stretched out his second stint back on the mediums he’d used at the start, while Norris was making use of the two hard tyre sets McLaren had favoured for its race strategy. When Sainz pitted out of Verstappen’s way at the end of lap 36, the Dutchman’s path to victory was complete.

But Sainz then had a 7.7s gap to Norris and 2.1s further on to his team-mate. He quickly ate into these deficits, including while passing Hamilton, and despatched both his former and current team-mate with easy DRS-assisted runs down the pitstraight on laps 44 and 46 – in Norris’s case after the McLaren had locked up at the hairpin on the previous tour.

“The track condition changed a lot through the race,” Sainz said afterwards. “We went from a very sunny track that we hadn't had all weekend to a very cloudy track. The degradation went down a lot [as a result of that] and you could push a lot more on the tyres halfway through the race. This changed the whole situation quite a lot. At one point, I thought the podium wasn't possible, but then with a new hard [for the final stint], the pace was mega and I could get back onto the podium.”

Sainz joined the Red Bull drivers on the podium as his strong start to the season continued

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images