Luke’s Weekend Review – Japanese GP 2023

We now look at the nightmare of a race that Perez had. When the Safety car was out, he got a safety car infringement as he overtook someone going into the pits. After the safety car, Perez was basically last, so he had some work to do to recover. He manages to make a couple places after the restart but when it came to overtake Kevin Magnussen he was finding this difficult and on lap 12 Perez goes for an ambitious dive into the hairpin from a long way back and ends up hitting Magnussen spinning him right round while also picking up front wing damage once more, this meant that Perez needs to go back to the pits for a new front wing. While in the pits Perez serves his 5 seconds penalty and then got back out to the track. This however was short lived as on Lap 15 Red Bull call Perez to pit to retire the car due to damage.

With talks about Perez getting a penalty for the Magnussen incident is where the bizarre thing happened that left everyone watching a bit puzzled and amazed, on lap 27 we see Perez get back into his Red Bull with talks of going back out to serve the penalty if he was going to get one. It wasn’t till lap 40 until we actually see Perez go back out onto the track to do one lap, box to serve the penalty, go back out and do another lap until he was called in again to retire again. This is what technically gave Red Bull 2 DNFs but still have a driver finish the race. This series of events was very strange and will potentially cause a few controversies as Red Bull managed to find a loophole in the rules and I’m sure the FIA will review this rule and make it more clear as for sure. Personally I don’t believe you should be allowed back out if you retire a car. What are your thoughts?

Fernando Alonso was having a few difficulties at around lap 20 as he was still on his starting tyres and was stuck behind Esteban Ocon and couldn’t get past him in the DRS zone so much so that other drivers on fresher tyres were catching him easily and we saw both Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc and Hamilton get past the Spaniard with ease. His teammate Lance Stroll was also not having the best of luck in Japan as he retired on lap 22 due to some rear wing failure, Alonso’s engineer is heard coming in the radio telling Alonso to avoid curbs as a precaution.

George Russell’s luck hasn’t changed much since last week as on lap 25 he pits for hards attempting to go for the one stop, unfortunately this strategy didn’t pay off in the end as everyone around who did a two stop was way quicker than him including his teammate Hamilton who on lap 49 was right on Russell’s gearbox and the team gave the team order for the 2 Mercedes cars to swap places as Carlos Sainz was quickly catching them both and Hamilton feared that if the pair don’t swap, they will end up losing 2 places. Against Russell’s wishes the pair swap places and Hamilton tries to hold back to keep Russell in DRS, however the Ferrari of Sainz was too quick and by lap 50 Sainz was past Russell.

Williams didn’t have the best race either due to the collisions early on in the race and by lap 28 both of their drivers had to retire due to the damage that they suffered. This was very disappointing for the Williams team given their recent form with Albon at least in the last few races. In Qatar they’ll be looking to put this behind them and get a decent result.

McLaren were the team to look out for in my opinion this weekend as both drivers were on top form. Early in the race after the first rounds of pits Norris and Piastri were on different strategies so when Norris caught up to Piastri he was asking for the cars to be switched around due to the strategy and the extra pace he had. On lap 27, McLaren do pull the trigger and switch the cars over to give Lando so free air to build a gap ahead to protect the podium. Piastri himself had a mega drive today as he pulled some nice overtakes especially the one on Russell on lap 42 where he went round the outside into Turn 1 giving him the inside line to Turn 2 and then just a faultless drive which got him his first podium in F1 making him the first rookie since 2017 to get a podium. Piastri also bagged the driver of the day in the Japanese GP.

Verstappen unsurprisingly wins the race with a very comfortable margin of 19 seconds as he comes back with a vengeance after the Singapore GP and made it a point to dominate this weekend also taking the fastest lap, Verstappen was followed by Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz, George Russell, Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon forming the top 10. This win from Verstappen also clinched the constructors championship for Red Bull for the 2^nd year running. Max will now put his focus on the Drivers championship where he will have a chance to win it in Qatar.

Who do you think was the biggest winners and the biggest losers of the Japanese GP? We now head into a week break before we return to the track for the Qatar GP.