At the Japanese Grand Prix, Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez scored a winning double

The Red Bull team, after a misfire in Australia two weeks ago, returned to the winning trajectory. At the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday, Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez scored a winning double, their third this season. But the brightest team of the race was, perhaps, Ferrari. The Italians had no chance to win, but thanks to well-thought-out tactics, Ferrari managed to secure third and fourth places for Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc. In an era of Red Bull’s already cringeworthy dominance, this is a great result.

Two weeks ago in Australia, hope flashed for Formula 1 fans, at least those who want to see a real battle on the tracks, and not a dull following of the leader. Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, who achieved two winning doubles in the first two races of the season, did not make the podium at all in Melbourne: Verstappen’s car broke down, Perez finished fourth. Both Ferrari drivers, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, immediately crawled into the gap, which gave Scuderia fans a reason to be optimistic about the next race of the season – the Japanese Grand Prix. But expectations turned out to be too high, and the problems faced by the hegemon, Red Bull, were exaggerated. After all, Verstappen and Perez already in qualifying (according to its results, they occupied the first line of the starting field) made it clear that they still have the best cars.

In the race itself, both Verstappen and Perez from the very start, or rather, two starts (on the first lap there was an accident involving Daniel Ricciardo (RB) and Alex Albon (Williams), which led to a stoppage of the race and a subsequent restart from a standing start), They never gave any reason to doubt their superiority and finished in the same order in which they started – first and second. And now Red Bull, after four stages, already has three doubles. And one more thing: for Verstappen this is the third victory in a row on Suzuki, and before him only Michael Schumacher himself had achieved such a series. True, in terms of the total number of Japanese Grand Prix won, the Dutchman is inferior to Schumacher (6 victories), Lewis Hamilton (5), and Sebastian Vettel (4). “Well, you know, in the previous race we had a slight misfire, but we are glad that we are back on the winning path,” Verstappen modestly remarked after the finish, whose lead over Perez in second had reached 13 points.

But what attracted much more attention than Verstappen’s regular victory was the way Ferrari conducted the race. The Scuderia is well known for preparing a bunch of plans for the stage, called A, B, C and further in alphabetical order. Moreover, Italians often seem to get confused in the schemes developed by their strategists, make strange decisions, for which they are subjected to ridicule. But in Japan, Italian planning worked perfectly, providing the team with the best possible result under the current circumstances. Key events unfolded around Charles Leclerc. He was only eighth in qualifying, and it was decided to switch him to the one-stop tactic rarely used on Suzuki. The decision is risky and fraught with loss of time. It could only work if the pace of movement along the highway, the timing of changing tires, and the order in which types of tires were used were perfectly calculated. Ferrari coped with the task brilliantly and pulled Leclerc into fourth place behind teammate Sainz, who was running on a more traditional two-stop tactic. At the moment, Leclerc even found himself ahead of the Spaniard, but from the pits he was ordered to let Sainz go ahead, since there were fears that the slower Leclerc would be “gobbled up” by Lando Norris. The fears were not justified, the McLaren driver was three seconds behind Leclerc, but it is still difficult to blame Ferrari for playing it safe. “An amazing strategy, amazing time management, amazing pace,” Leclerc noted after the race. “It’s hard to expect more when you start eighth.”

The next race will take place in Shanghai in two weeks. This is a pretty important moment for Formula 1. After all, the race has not been held in China for the last four years, that is, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Alexander Petrov