McLaren can use its clear position in third place in the constructors’ championship as “a trampoline” to try and challenge Red Bull and Ferrari with upgrades, according to team principal Andrea Stella. In 2023, McLaren struggled significantly in the …
McLaren can use its clear position in third place in the constructors’ championship as “a trampoline” to try and challenge Red Bull and Ferrari with upgrades, according to team principal Andrea Stella.
In 2023, McLaren struggled significantly in the opening rounds but its season was turned around by a major update in Austria at the start of July. This season, Stella is taking confidence from the way McLaren has cemented its position as a podium contender, as it sits third in the standings with more than double the points of fourth-placed Mercedes.
“We are pleased with the fact that we confirmed a strong third position in these first four races of the season, the third-best car, and definitely this is reflected in the championship points,” Stella told SiriusXM. “So this is a positive, and it’s a positive for many reasons. The most important for me is that we kind of consolidated the trajectory that McLaren started 12 months ago.
“But this is a trampoline. This is a starting point for us to further improve the car, which is definitely needed if you want to stay third because the cars behind us will not just be watching. But I would like to say that we look forward. We look at Ferrari not being too far away, and we know that we have potential in our car development.
“So this is the race that we want to have this year — like last year a development race, and then let’s see at the end of the season who has done the better job.”
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A significant upgrade package was referenced from the moment McLaren launched its 2024 car, and Stella says next week’s Chinese Grand Prix is likely to be the final race before it is introduced at the Miami GP next month.
“I hope we will be able to deploy the upgrades in Miami. Even if it’s a sprint event I think the performance opportunity that we have deserves a consideration even for a sprint event,” Stella said. “It’s the same as we did last year in Austria, and very likely this is what we will be doing this year in Miami. Once we see how much performance we are able to add there, we will more realistically think about what we can compete for this season.”
While conceding that last weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix was a missed opportunity to score points, Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu believes it was a demonstration of an upward trajectory in potential for the rest of the 2024 season. Haas has scored …
While conceding that last weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix was a missed opportunity to score points, Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu believes it was a demonstration of an upward trajectory in potential for the rest of the 2024 season.
Haas has scored in two of the first four races — including double points in Australia — but missed out at Suzuka where Nico Hulkenberg finished 11th. The German was 5.5 seconds behind Yuki Tsunoda at the checkered flag, having taken the restart after an early red flag in 10th place but gone rapidly backwards before Turn 1 and been left with significant ground to make up.
“Nico’s first start was very good, he made positions, but the second start he just didn’t drop the clutch correctly, so the anti-stall [kicked in] and he lost loads of positions,” Komatsu said. “So considering he came back from P18 or whatever it was to P11, 5.5s behind Tsunoda, if he can do that from there, if he didn’t have that mistake for sure he would have scored points.
“So that is frustrating and a missed opportunity. But the positive side is this circuit, in race four, is the worst for us so far. I always said we need to do four or five races to see where the car is. This [Suzuka] is the worst circuit by far, and if on the worst circuit you can do this, that’s very positive.”
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Kevin Magnussen also had his race compromised by losing positions during a pit stop, but in analyzing the overall form of Haas in the opening four rounds, Komatsu says the team can be encouraged even if it’s clear where improvements are needed.
“Ultimately, as you can see, high-speed downforce, we haven’t got enough,” he said. “So that’s what we need to improve, and then certain characteristics on front axle of the car we need to improve. But honestly, this is our worst circuit, so the encouraging thing is we can race this much on this circuit. I wasn’t expecting that.
“[In qualifying] I was staring at trying to get just one car into Q2, and for Nico to deliver P12 was amazing. I still felt it was going to be really tough even to stay in that position. But we went backwards once and he managed to recover that well — it was good.
“Operationally it wasn’t great, Kevin losing two positions. If it wasn’t for that I think Kevin had a very good chance to stay in front of Tsunoda, and for sure Nico without that disastrous start would have scored points. So that is really positive.”
Sergio Perez says he can be strong at any circuit this season given his improved performance across the last two Japanese Grand Prix weekends. Suzuka was towards the end of the 2023 calendar and Perez struggled in October, qualifying some 0.8s off …
Sergio Perez says he can be strong at any circuit this season given his improved performance across the last two Japanese Grand Prix weekends.
Suzuka was towards the end of the 2023 calendar and Perez struggled in October, qualifying some 0.8s off Max Verstappen in fifth place, and then retiring after multiple collisions. This time around, Perez was just 0.066s off his teammate in qualifying and comfortably finished second, and he sees the result as indicative of his potential for the entire season.
“I think we are in a good momentum,” Perez said. “I think if you remember here last year, it was probably my worst weekend. So I think if we are strong in places like this with a lot of high-speed content, medium-speed, I think we can be strong anywhere else. It’s been a good weekend.”
Perez looked able to stay relatively close to Verstappen for much of the first part of the race before fading from contention, and he says it was higher than expected tire degradation that compromised his chances of sticking with his teammate.
“With the start, doing that restart again is always quite hard to keep the focus for such a long period of time. It worked alright. My second start was a little bit better, but just not enough to get Max.
“I think we paid the price a little bit because we were a little bit off balance on that first stint, which meant we couldn’t keep it alive. We had to box and we were undercut by Lando [Norris]. And then I had to push too much on that medium stint. But then on the hard stint, I was a lot more comfortable, and the pace came back. But yeah, I think I suffered a bit from that first stint being a bit unbalanced.”
The struggles in the first stint were highlighted by a slight off-track moment at the second Degner corner, with Perez feeling he lost touch with Verstappen at that stage.
“It was quite a tricky corner. A lot of people went out there. I just went in over the curb and I was just hoping to don’t pick up any damage because it’s so easy with these floors to go off and have damage. As far as I know, we don’t have any. I just understeered wide and went over the curb.
“Once you are at the top of the curb, 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. But I obviously picked up a lot of dirt on my tires, which took a lap or two to really clean up, and I lost a couple of seconds with that.”
Fernando Alonso believes his performance at the Japanese Grand Prix, where he finished sixth, was one of the best of his career. Qualifying in fifth place, Alonso had warned that he feels he regularly overachieves in qualifying and then slips back …
Fernando Alonso believes his performance at the Japanese Grand Prix, where he finished sixth, was one of the best of his career.
Qualifying in fifth place, Alonso had warned that he feels he regularly overachieves in qualifying and then slips back to the team’s average position over a race distance. Aston Martin had an upgrade at Suzuka and Sunday’s race saw Alonso only drop behind Charles Leclerc, holding off Oscar Piastri for much of the final stint and earning a top-six finish he rates highly.
“I think it was my best weekend in I don’t know… Inside the top five ever, for me,” Alonso said. “P5 in qualifying, that lap, and P6 in the race is completely out of position. So very proud.
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“I think we are the fifth fastest team by a good margin to the fourth and a good margin to the sixth. We are quite established there. There is no way to compare us with Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, so that’s why to finish P5 and P6 is completely unusual.
“We did it in Australia as well – we finished P6 – here P6 again, P5 I think in Jeddah, so we are executing the races very well and the others are experimenting a little bit with the strategy and other things. We are capitalizing on those, but we need to improve the pace, for sure.”
Pushed on how he comes to the conclusion of the pecking order, Alonso added: “I drive the car on track. I see it.”
The two-time world champion had praise for the way Aston Martin is delivering as a race team, but wants to see further gains made in terms of outright car performance.
“I think there are a couple of things in the pipeline to improve the car. I think this first package is just the first baseline of what we will introduce later in the season,” he said. “So we still need to analyze many things, but as I said we are executing very well on Sundays, maximizing the points or even more than what we deserve normally.
“Pit stops were great, actually on the second stop when I saw the green light and I went, I said ‘Maybe they didn’t change all four tires’ because for me this felt like the fastest ever. So I’m curious to see the time.
“There are small things here and there that are making it possible to get the result, but I think fundamentally the pace is not where we want to be, and this is something we need to focus on now.”
Toto Wolff believes the Japanese Grand Prix has yielded some important answers to perplexing questions for Mercedes as it gains an understanding of how to extract performance from its car. George Russell finished seventh and Lewis Hamilton ninth at …
Toto Wolff believes the Japanese Grand Prix has yielded some important answers to perplexing questions for Mercedes as it gains an understanding of how to extract performance from its car.
George Russell finished seventh and Lewis Hamilton ninth at Suzuka, a reversal of their qualifying positions after a frustrating weekend in terms of final results. However, Wolff says the previous race in Australia allowed Mercedes to prove it has raw aerodynamic potential in the car that is just simply not yet translating into the expected performance.
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“I think the car is so complex where we put it in terms of the aero balance and the mechanical balance, and these two need to correlate,” he said.
“We’ve followed a certain trajectory over the last years, and keep going in circles and we came to a point saying ‘okay we’re going to do something different here,’ because we are measuring downforce with our sensors and our pressure tabs and it’s telling us we have 70 points more downforce in a particular corner in Melbourne than we had last year, but in lap time it’s not a kilometer per hour faster, so it doesn’t make any sense.
“So where is the limitation? I think we wanted to tick a few boxes to understand is there any limitation that we haven’t spotted, and I think there is.
“There should be more downforce than we believe it is, and now we’ve measured the downforce and it’s there, we’re just not able to extract the lap time out of it that we should and that simulations show us. It’s not trivial.”
Given the experiments Mercedes has carried out over the last few races, and with Hamilton actually stating how much happier with the car’s handling he was prior to Sunday, Wolff says the finishing positions should not distract the team from the signs of progress.
“When you look at the results – 7th and 9th in qualifying and 7th and 9th in the race – that’s clearly not good. And everybody knows that. But we’ve definitely made a big step forward in how we want to run the car and in our understanding.
“This was one of the worst tracks for us last year, we were pretty close to the frontrunners – not Max [Verstappen] but the guys behind – in qualifying, that came as a surprise. We were very quick through the Esses, where last year we were nowhere.
“And in the race when you look at how it unfolded we were trying to make a one-stop stick, probably over-managed the tires and had an atrocious first stint but a very competitive second and third stint once we basically did what the others did. That would have looked completely different.
“So seventh and ninth, just not good. There’s nothing to add, nothing to make rosey, I think we’re going away from Suzuka not happy with the result but definitely there is more to come.”
Carlos Sainz believes his third place in the Japanese Grand Prix provides a clear indication of the progress Ferrari has made over the past six months. At last year’s race at Suzuka – held in October – Sainz finished sixth, 50 seconds behind …
Carlos Sainz believes his third place in the Japanese Grand Prix provides a clear indication of the progress Ferrari has made over the past six months.
At last year’s race at Suzuka – held in October – Sainz finished sixth, 50 seconds behind race-winner Max Verstappen, while teammate Charles Leclerc was a further 44s off in fourth place. This time around, Sainz picked up another podium and was just under 21s away from Verstappen, with Leclerc close behind, and the Spaniard says it proves where Ferrari has been able to strengthen.
“It’s very satisfying,” Sainz said. “We exactly improved the car in the places that we wanted to improve it, and Suzuka proves it. Still, places like Suzuka, we are not as quick as the Red Bull, which is the target, but as soon as we bring a good upgrade to the car that goes in the right direction, hopefully it can get us closer.
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“But yeah, we’ve improved everywhere, and especially in the race pace. It also allows us to have more strategic flexibility, that last year we didn’t have. It allows me to go forward in the races and instead of looking in my mirrors all the time to offset myself with strategy and then overtake people, which is something that last year wasn’t on the cards at any point. So, I’m happy and it makes me enjoy racing more.”
Despite those positive signs that Ferrari is moving in the right direction, and his victory in Melbourne, Sainz says he never had any expectations that Red Bull could be challenged at Suzuka.
“We kind of knew our race pace was better than our qualifying pace,” he said. “Still probably not enough to go for a win because obviously starting P4 and given how good the race pace of the Red Bull is, it’s almost impossible to think about a win, but I was hopeful of achieving a podium that in the end we managed to achieve, even if it was a very tough race, very strategic.
“The track condition changed a lot through the race. 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 and you could push a lot more on the tires 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 [tire], the pace was mega and I could get back onto the podium.”
Alex Albon says the crash he suffered at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix will hurt Williams due to its lack of spare parts and chassis. Daniel Ricciardo moved across as Albon was trying to pull alongside on the run to Turn 3, with the pair …
Alex Albon says the crash he suffered at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix will hurt Williams due to its lack of spare parts and chassis.
Daniel Ricciardo moved across as Albon was trying to pull alongside on the run to Turn 3, with the pair making contact and both hitting the same tire barrier. The damage to the barrier caused a red flag and while Albon was understanding of the decision not to penalize Ricciardo — who was also fighting with Lance Stroll and had a tire disadvantage — he says the impact on Williams could be painful.
“Softs against mediums starting, so (I) had a grip advantage,” Albon said. “Kind of prized the grip I had out of Turn 2 and was able to crawl underneath him and have a good run into Turn 3. It was more about just trying to get him a little bit offline from Turn 3 and try and find a way for 4/5/6/7 to see if I could upset his line a little bit.
“Obviously just one of those things. He didn’t see me, clearly. I tried to back out of it last minute. There was a moment where I realized ‘he hasn’t seen me here’ and the way he’s pulling across, it’s tricky. So I hit the brakes and tried to get out of it. But we’re almost too far alongside him that as I’ve backed out of it, he still was coming across and I couldn’t avoid it.
“It’s no secret that we are having a tough time with it at the moment with the parts we’ve got, and this is gonna hurt us for sure.”
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Williams could only run one car in Melbourne as a result of Albon’s FP1 crash that damaged his chassis, and the team won’t have a spare before Miami. Albon admits he was thinking of the potential repercussions as the crash was unfolding, although Williams team principal James Vowles later told RACER the initial images before the car was returned to the garage suggested the chassis had survived the incident.
“The impact itself was relatively low speed, but it’s the way that I hit the tire wall,” Albon added. “Normally, we have these kind of plastic barriers but this was much more dug in, and it really stops very violently. They’re the questions I’m worried about — not for me, for the car — because that’s where you can do damage. We haven’t had the car back yet, we need to assess it. Hopefully, it’s OK.
“Immediately, as soon as I was before I even hit the wall, it was like, ‘This is exactly what we don’t need.’ We need to assess it and try and come back strong for China.”
Daniel Ricciardo says he was trying to leave space for a car even though he didn’t see Alex Albon as the pair crashed heavily at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix. Albon was attempting to pull alongside Ricciardo out of Turn 2 on the opening lap …
Daniel Ricciardo says he was trying to leave space for a car even though he didn’t see Alex Albon as the pair crashed heavily at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix.
Albon was attempting to pull alongside Ricciardo out of Turn 2 on the opening lap of the race, but the Australian — starting on mediums and with a pace disadvantage to those on softs — had Lance Stroll to his left. With Ricciardo moving towards the outside of the track before the left-handed Turn 3, Albon tried to back out of the move but his left front made contact with Ricciardo’s right rear. Both cars hit the tire wall heavily, causing a red flag.
“We definitely got gobbled up on that medium,” Ricciardo said. “It was weird because the cars in front of us look like they got off the line well. I guess [George] Russell — and pretty sure everyone in front — was on the medium. So it just looks like Yuki [Tsunoda] and I didn’t have the grip that we anticipated.
“As soon as we launched, I could see [Valtteri] Bottas and [Nico] Hulkenberg just split us and go around. Then into Turn 1, I was in the middle, I think with Yuki and an Alpine sling by. Turn 2 I thought, ‘All right, let’s just settle’ and I soon as I got on the throttle, I was still struggling.
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“Then I think Stroll was on my outside, so I was trying to hold him off. Then I guess as I started to come back for Turn 3, Albon’s there. I watched his onboard, and 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, so I didn’t see him.
“But honestly, I always assume maybe someone is there — it’s lap 1 so I never try to use the full width of the track and be completely ignorant. But yeah, I guess there was obviously not enough room.
“All things considered, if we could wind back the clock an hour, I would start on the soft. But for the record, I wanted to be on the medium. That’s not something I fought against. But knowing what we know now the soft would have been a lot better for us.”
The stewards investigated the collision after the race and opted to take no further action, given how many cars were a factor in the incident and the fact it was on the opening lap of the race.
“On the approach to Turn 3, the driver of Car 3 [Ricciardo] noticed Car 18 [Stroll] on his left and stated that he wanted to give that car sufficient room,” the stewards’ decision read. “He stated he then looked to the apex of Turn 3. He did not see Car 23 [Albon] on his right.
“The driver of Car 23 stated that he thought he could overtake Car 3 on the outside, into Turn 3, but then suddenly realized that Car 3 had not seen him, applied the brakes but could not avoid the contact with Car 3.
“Accordingly we determine this to be a first lap incident and decide to take no further action.
“If this incident had occurred on a subsequent lap, or without the presence of the third car (Car 18), a different determination would have been made.”
Max Verstappen claimed a comfortable victory ahead of teammate Sergio Perez in a Red Bull one-two finish at the Japanese Grand Prix. Verstappen was flawless off the line to hold Perez at bay into the first corner, but the Dutchman was forced into a …
Max Verstappen claimed a comfortable victory ahead of teammate Sergio Perez in a Red Bull one-two finish at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Verstappen was flawless off the line to hold Perez at bay into the first corner, but the Dutchman was forced into a second standing start when the race was almost immediately red flagged for a heavy crash between Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon.
Albon followed Ricciardo out of Turn 2 in the middle of the road and tried to sneak up the Australian’s outside into the left-handed Turn 3.
Ricciardo moved to the right to take the racing line just as the Williams driver pulled alongside the RB’s rear axle, and despite the contact being relatively light, both cars speared off the road and into the tire barrier at speed. The drivers emerged uninjured, but the barrier needed significant repair, suspending the race for half an hour.
While Verstappen held sway from the start, chaos soon ensued behind. Steve Etherington/Motorsport Images
The race was restarted from the grid on lap 3, and Verstappen was again slick dropping the clutch to hold a lead he wouldn’t meaningfully relinquish for the rest of the afternoon, completing a breezy 12.5s victory over Perez.
“It was very nice,” Verstappen said. “I think the critical bit was of course the start, to stay ahead. After that the car just got better and better for me throughout the race.
“Everything just went really well. It couldn’t have been any better.”
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Perez had a more complicated grand prix. Slower in the first stint, he was undercut by Lando Norris and forced into a comeback charge.
But the Mexican was in a fighting mood. After a pair of gutsy passes through 130R past the Mercedes drivers on an alternative strategy, he snatched the place back from Norris with a dive into the chicane to restore himself to net second and secure Red Bull’s third one-two finish of the season.
“It was a good weekend for the team,” he said. “I think we have good momentum. If you remember here last year, it was probably my worst weekend. If we’re strong in places like this … I think we can be strong everywhere.”
Carlos Sainz collected his third podium of the year with a well judged two-stop strategy, including two stints on the medium tire.
While Norris vaulted has high as second with a pair of early stops, the McLaren’s worse degradation left him vulnerable to Sainz’s better balance strategy, the Spaniard sweeping into second on lap 46 of 53.
“I had a good race,” he said. “I’m very happy because it was quite tough out there with the degradation. I thought [a podium] was on, but I thought it was going to be very difficult to get back into P3. “
Charles Leclerc executed an ambitious one-stop strategy on a day tire life was uncertain owing to the lack of practice time and warmer Sunday weather. Leclerc ran a long 25-lap opening stint on the medium tire, briefly taking the lead of the race, before switching to the hard and clinging on ahead of the faster finishers. He was no match for teammate Sainz late in the race, but he had more than enough pace to keep Norris at bay in the battle for fourth and fifth.
Fernando Alonso finished sixth, holding off a fast-finishing George Russell with the aid of Oscar Piastri, who he expertly held in his DRS zone to create a buffer to the Mercedes.
Piastri defended sternly to keep seventh from Russell. The Briton tried a move into he chicane with four laps to go, but the pair made light contact, and Piastri held the place by running off the road.
The Australian wasn’t so lucky three laps later, however, when a wide moment exiting the same turn left him vulnerable to a DRS move into the first corner, finishing behind Russell win seventh and eighth.
Lewis Hamilton was a frustrated ninth after a botched attempt to complete the race with a single stop, with a late conversion to two stops giving him limited reprieve after having let Russell through in a team order early in the race.
Yuki Tsunoda was an excellent 10th, gaining places on both Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas in the pit lane at his second stop, scoring the final point of his home grand prix.
The RB driver was being pursued by Lance Stroll in the faster Aston Martin car in the final stint, but the Canadian didn’t have the pace to make an impact and was passed by Nico Hulkenberg for 11th on the final tour.
Kevin Magnussen finished 13th ahead of Valtteri Bottas and the woefully slow Alpine cars piloted by Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.
Logan Sargeant finished 17th and last after running off the track at the second Degner with 11 laps to go while chasing Hulkenberg for position.
Zhou Guanyu was the race’s only retirement after the first-lap crash, stopping early with a gearbox issue.
Max Verstappen is concerned about his potential race pace despite continuing his run of pole positions at the Japanese Grand Prix. Verstappen maintained his 100 percent pole position record in 2024, with his fifth pole in a row stretching back to …
Max Verstappen is concerned about his potential race pace despite continuing his run of pole positions at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Verstappen maintained his 100 percent pole position record in 2024, with his fifth pole in a row stretching back to the final race of last season. However, with a rain-hit FP2 limiting the practice time on high fuel that teams have had, Verstappen says he is not as confident as usual in his race performance at this stage of the weekend.
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“I think so far, I haven’t been happy with my long runs,” Verstappen said. “The pace wasn’t what I would have liked, so there’s a bit of a question mark going into tomorrow, because looking at the long runs, especially Ferrari, they look very comfortable. So maybe they were not so quick over one lap today, but they were definitely fast in the long run, so we’ll have to wait and see how that will evolve tomorrow in the race.
“Also [McLaren looks] quite decent. I’m just not very happy with myself, with how my long run was, so then naturally everyone else looks a bit better.
“I cannot look inside the Ferrari garage why [it didn’t qualify on the front row], but it’s quite obvious that then in the long run they seem quite competitive. So, we’ll see tomorrow why that is or if it actually is the case like that.
“From our side, I have some ideas of what we have to look into to make tomorrow better, and that’s also what we already changed after FP3. So hopefully that will be better for tomorrow. 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 it like that. But hopefully with the changes that we made, it will be better.”
Verstappen also only took pole position by 0.066s over teammate Sergio Perez, explaining how challenging it was to get the perfect lap around the iconic Suzuka circuit.
“I think around here at Suzuka, it’s always very nice when the fuel comes out, the balance is more or less there. It’s always very, very nice. The car’s improving every single year, it makes it even better, especially the high speed, it feels really cool. So that made it really nice today.
“I started to lose time from Turn 13 onwards, it’s very sensitive around here with the tires, as soon as you push maybe a bit too hard in sector one, you run out of tires to the end, and that’s what happened to me on my final lap.
“That’s why I didn’t really improve a lot, also my last chicane, because my front tires were giving up, I didn’t hit the curb how it should have been. That’s it, it wasn’t ideal. It was still good enough, so of course I always want it to be perfect, but that’s not possible. So luckily it was still good enough today.”
While Perez was so close to pole position he was satisfied with his first top-two qualifying result since Miami last year, and attributes a major step forward compared to the end of last season to a more simplified approach.
“Like Carlos [Sainz] would say, we stopped inventing!” Perez said. “We were playing around with the car too much, far too much, and just going through it. I think now we have a much better base, we are a lot happier and the weekends just progress.
“I think when we came here last year, we were at the stage of our season where [nothing] was working, and when you are in that, you just go in circles and circles, and in the end, towards the end of the year, we found it was better just to take a step back and don’t try to chase it too much with the set-up, because then you start compromising other things.
“I think that’s been the case for this year. I’m a lot more comfortable, a lot more happier, and the confidence is slowly coming back.”
