Max Verstappen and Lando Norris dissect their F1 Japanese GP as they add on the pit drama and strategy, with Christian Horner and Andrea Stella chipping in.
After Red Bull’s Verstappen surprised everyone taking F1 pole in Japanese GP, the Dutchman followed it up with a win on Sunday in a grand prix where nothing extra ordinary happened. Eventually track position was king, even though McLaren had two cars against one to get to.
Both Norris and Piastri didn’t look menacing to clear Verstappen at any point of the grand prix. The Australian felt he was quicker than his teammate but team boss Stella didn’t think it was given. Nevertheless, Norris tried the slow and push tactics in the final stint, but to no avail.
McLaren even tried to sell a dummy which didn’t work. A better pit stop helped Norris to get alongside Verstappen, in probably the only dramatic moment in the grand prix, but the Dutchman had his nose ahead. Team boss Horner noted having two reserves in the pit crew which slowed them by millisecond.
Both Norris and Stella defended the call to pit along with Verstappen as they couldn’t risk taking a gamble of pitting before or later. There were no safety car periods as well. Horner believes McLaren’s idea of letting two cars to fight is what hampers them in taking bold strategies.
Race in the end, last stages –
Verstappen: “Yeah, it was a fun race. I mean, the whole race I saw two orange cars in my mirror, and yeah, especially those last 20 laps, we were pushing quite hard out there. You could just feel the tyres were degrading more and more. But you had to keep on fighting it, basically being on the limit. But yeah, it was better than expected, to be honest. My race pace—I do think that probably the cooler track helped us out a bit. Less tyre overheating, and yeah, just very proud with this result. I think most of it of course was done yesterday being able to start from pole, because around here I think it’s just very hard to follow. You know, the cars are improving every single year, more downforce, and probably you’ll see it’s just a bit harder to follow. You only have one DRS zone as well here, so it’s very tough. Plus the degradation seemed quite low, so you do a one-stop. So I think that definitely helps. But still, we take it, we really maximised the weekend, and I’m very proud of everyone. It’s impossible to tell because you don’t really know how long the tyres are going to hold up.
“But I would say with like five laps to go, I felt like, “This is OK, the tyres are holding on to a normal extent, they’re not fully falling out of the window” So I was like, “well, from here on it’s just make no mistakes and it should be OK”. I mean, it means, I guess, that I really care, even though of course it’s not been the easiest start to the year for us. You know, we are not where we want to be in terms of performance. I think that’s no secret. But yeah, this weekend has been really, really nice. Sometimes you have those kind of moments where you get some really great laps out of it. And luckily, of course, also the balance got a bit more together throughout that qualifying. So yeah, we just have to keep on working. I mean it’s nice, but I’m a bit of a person—I don’t listen to the positives and the negatives. I’m just in the middle, you know. So I just focus on my own performances and yeah, just keep working, keep grinding.”
Norris: “Tough. I mean, I could see Max quite clearly for the whole race, but just couldn’t make any inroads from that point onwards. So I think him in clean air was enough to stay in that position and he didn’t make any mistakes. He drove a good race. So, I don’t know, like he said, the race was won yesterday in hindsight, and I guess we always kind of know the better position you start, the more chance you have of winning. But I think our pace was probably slightly better, but not enough to get through the dirty air, kind of get into the DRS, and then passing is a whole other story because it’s pretty much impossible to pass here. So yeah, I think it was a good race. We tried some things. Maybe we could have tried a bit more with strategy. Overcut or undercut—we just boxed on the same lap for some reason. So some things we’ll discuss, but good points for us as a team. Decent points for me. Of course, would have liked a little bit more, but have to take second sometimes.”
Horner: “What a great race, an incredible race for Max, great for the team. The majority of the hard work was done yesterday. When you look at, I guess, 90% of the cars finished in the order that they started in. But it was a flat-out sprint race today, there was very low degradation. We know the McLarens are very, very fast and it needed Max to be inch-perfect, with two very fast McLarens right behind him. For 53 laps he made not a single mistake and had the pace to cover them, keep them out of his DRS. He was particularly strong in turn 11 and the last corner to keep that vital second gap, and had enough to cover whatever they could throw at us today.
“A huge win, particularly here in Japan, running the car in a Honda livery. And thanks to the partnership that we’ve enjoyed so far with Honda. But there’s no bigger motivator than winning and so the injection of motivation that they provided to the whole team is fantastic. I think that’s one of Max’s best weekends that he’s had. We literally turned the car upside down, set up wise. He’s worked very hard with the engineering team. Finally, we were able to give him a car that he could make use of in Q3 yesterday with the most stunning lap, and then convert that today into a hard-fought victory in a straight fight. It puts him one point behind in the Drivers’ Championship, so we leave Japan still with plenty of work to do, but huge motivation.”
Pit drama, strategy –
Verstappen: “Yeah, I think the grass was a bit—it was not really well cut on the right-hand side. So I think Lando saw that as well, and he made sure that it was nicely cut.”
Norris: “Yeah, I mean, like you said, the guys just did a very good pit stop under pressure. It was our one opportunity to try and get a bit closer. I wasn’t even trying to race Max, I was just trying to cut the grass like he said! Didn’t even know he was there, actually. So no, nothing. He had the position and he had the right to do what he did, so fair play. In terms of strategy, I don’t know. I probably should have tried to undercut, I think. The thing is there’s always the Safety Car risk and so forth.
“I think I could have gone longer because I don’t think I would have lost position. So that wasn’t off the cards, but yeah, I think we probably should have just tried to run the card and then tried something different. But it just wasn’t today. So yeah, things we’ll talk about. Honestly, I think the undercut is not easy here because the Hard is not mega in the first sector. So whether that even would have worked, I’m unsure. And Max still always had a little buffer to me. So even if I did have a good out lap, I don’t think it was enough to probably get past anyway.”
Stella: “It was just a call [the first dummy] to see if your opponents also reacts to that and they didn’t react. We will review obviously the gaps in terms of time to understand whether there was the possibility to go for an undercut with Lando that could actually be executed on Max. We don’t have to forget though that by giving up track positions, you also expose the car that you pit to safety car risk, for instance. Lando would have lost positions in a safety car should a safety car be deployed. So in hindsight, you don’t see any safety car, you don’t see anything. And you think, oh, yeah, I might have gone for the undercut, but an undercut attempt comes with some risks. And it was apparent, and I just finished. And it was apparent that the degradation was low. So I think if you lose position with a safety car, it’s lost. I don’t think we could have overtaken a Ferrari or a Mercedes. I think the problem for Lando [on an overcut] would be that he would have lost positions to some other cars, including Oscar.
“They’d pitted and they were faster, and if you stay out on a 20-lap used medium, you cannot be faster than somebody that pitted on a hard. The situation became very clear when Russell pitted, and he was very fast on a new hard, it was obvious that hard was working really well. I think the overcut works well when you know that you gain like in Barcelona or in Suzuka in the past, you gain four or five laps of tyre delta. Then, even if you pit behind a car that stopped before, you will pass him because you have better tyres. But here, the tyres don’t almost degrade at all from one lap to the other. We kept seeing purple sectors and purple laps until the final lap. So it was a low-degradation race. It’s a tricky one. Normally, qualifying becomes very relevant when you have these types of races.”
Horner: “It was clear that pit stops were approaching. McLaren elected to pit Oscar first. But prior to that they called a dummy with Lando that really, to us, didn’t make any sense because it would just come out in traffic. So we stuck to our guns, we didn’t react to the dummy. They then pitted Oscar and it was clear that they were going to pit Lando the following lap. So then it was a matter of covering Lando. We didn’t have a totally clean pit stop. We’ve got a reserve crew with two members missing this weekend. And Lando got close-ish at the pit exit but he never looked [to be] alongside or anything like that. Thereafter on the hard tyre for 30-odd laps, Max had the pace to cover whatever McLaren could throw at us. And at different times, one minute was Lando, the next minute Oscar looked very quick.
“But as you could see, overtaking throughout the field was almost negligible. The undercut was reasonably powerful. I mean, could have, should have, would have. I’m sure I would have been down a bit there. As for the front wing, we didn’t get the front wing adjustment that we wanted into the car, so instead of cranking on a bit more front wing for the hard tyre, we didn’t get the adjustment that we wanted. So that provoked quite a bit more understeer into the car than would have been ideal. But with the performance engineer and engineering tweaking away at the tools, they were able to help Max compensate a little bit.”
Honda –
Verstappen: “I mean, of course, already yesterday was a very beautiful day for us. And then of course to follow it up with a win is just fantastic. Honestly, the relationship that we’ve had with Honda has been amazing. I’ve really enjoyed my time with them—how they also work, how professional they are and how dedicated they are. They’ve given me so much. Together we’ve won four Drivers’ Championships and two Constructors’. It’s been unbelievable and also, of course, something you’ll never forget. And it did cross my mind while driving as well. I said it would be insane to win here today, also for Honda on their track as well. So maybe gave that extra motivation to try to stay ahead. But yeah, it’s a proper send-off. I mean, we couldn’t have wished for a better weekend to be honest.”
McLaren scene –
Horner: “I guess the problem they have is they have two drivers that are fighting for the drivers’ championship. I guess the difficulty they have is that they’ve made a bed where they’re going to let them race, so that’s the compromise that inevitably comes with that.”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-japanese-grand-prix-pole-sitter-verstappen-leads-away-from-norris-and-piastri-on-the-race-start-at-suzuka.1828629145841504098
Here’s pit fight: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-japanese-grand-prix-norris-and-verstappen-fight-for-the-lead-at-the-pit-exit.1828636717846742415
Here’s Max Verstappen’s win: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-japanese-grand-prix-verstappen-crosses-the-line-to-take-his-first-victory-of-the-season.1828634457620257594
Here’s how F1 Japanese GP panned out
