Welcome to our coverage for the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix from Suzuka. One of the very great tracks, up there with Monza, Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps for my money. And perhaps the Circuit of the Americas, too. It felt a bit weird when we had the Japanese Grand Prix at Mount Fuji but Suzuka just feels right now.
What can we expect from today’s race? Well, the RB20 being the brilliant all-round car that it is was expected to be the class of the field and that has turned out to be the case. Max Verstappen took his fourth pole position of the season’s four races, though it was by a narrow margin from team-mate Sergio Perez.
Just 0.066sec separated the Red Bull pair. Although both of Verstappen’s laps were good enough for pole, both of Perez’s laps were within a tenth of the Dutchman’s equivalent efforts. That does not happen all that often. In third is the man who finished second in last year’s race, McLaren’s Lando Norris who was just under three-tenths off the pace. Decent effort. It was a bit of a mix of cars down from there with the order behind being: Sainz (Ferrari), Alonso (Aston Martin), Piastri (McLaren), Hamilton (Mercedes), Leclerc (Ferrari), Russell (Mercedes) and Tsunoda (RB).
The result represented a reflection of the status quo in 2024: Red Bull fastest but then uncertainty in the chasing pack. Is that a reason to be despondent? Perhaps, but there are reasons to be cheerful. Firstly, Perez was close to Verstappen. Secondly that pack was both closer within itself and far closer to the front than last year. In 2023 the gap between first and second was 0.581sec, the gap between first and fourth 0.665sec and the gfap between first and sixth nearly a full second. This is a big improvement in the competitive order and on a track which is a pretty good bellwether for the measure of an F1 car.
Does this mean we might see a competitive race? Well, I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much but it would be good for Perez to be a fixture in Verstappen’s race and hopefully for some of the bunch behind to be able to disrupt things a little. Last year Verstappen beat Norris by just under 20 seconds. So let’s see what happens this year.
The race starts at 6am BST and we will have all the build-up, live updates and reaction from Suzuka.
