🏁 Alonso: Here to Stay

🥇Max Verstappen [77]: Satisfied with his bounce back victory, “couldn’t have been better.” Wholesome Max alert: He was relieved to take P1 in front of his girlfriend’s daughter, Penelope, after she asked him why he retired in Australia (“well the car was on fire!” he told her). "I think Kelly [Max’s GF] is glad nothing happened today, otherwise she (Penelope) might feel as if she brings bad luck.”

🥈 Sergio Perez 📈 [64]: Expects decision on his future to be sorted out “within the next month.” According to Christian Horner, the seat his “his to lose”

🥉 Charles Leclerc 📉 [59]: Advocated for a 1-stop Plan C while the team was leaning towards their original Plan B, resulting in a P4 from an 8th position start. Teams will have different strategy options laid out as Plan A/B/C etc. which they will switch too depending how the race goes. And yes, sometimes the drivers do forget what a given plan means.

4️⃣ Carlos Sainz [55]: Thrilled with P3 after making numerous overtakes during the race, saying he was “very happy because it was quite tough out there with the degradation, but then suddenly the clouds came, the degradation went a lot lower, and suddenly I thought that maybe one-stop was quicker and we were on the two.” Two stop was no problem though, and he was able to overtake his one-stop teammate for the last podium spot.

5️⃣ Lando Norris 📈 [37]: Concedes that Ferrari is “on another level”, and wasn’t happy with a P5 after starting in 3rd position, but “we didn’t have any more pace today.”

6️⃣ Oscar Piastri 📉 [32]: Says Japan “not his best” weekend, adding “Obviously not fighting for the positions we wanted to be in but just struggled I think.” Russell overtook him on the last lap of the race, pushing him back to a P8 finish.

7️⃣ George Russell [24]: Dirty air is causing problems with his crash helmet, says during the race air turbulence is causing discomfort not seen in practice and qualifying.

8️⃣ Fernando Alonso [24]: Praises the team for maximizing “small factors” that lead to a P6 finish in Japan, a great result since he thinks they are the 5th fastest team which would mean typical P9/P10 finishes. Alonso also took a page from the Sainz playbook - intentionally giving the chasing Piastri DRS in order to defend Russell behind - sealing his P6 result.

9️⃣ Lewis Hamilton 📈 [10]: At a post race media session, he was asked if he was “jealous” watching Ferrari’s strong performances. He replied, “Do you have any better questions?” and walked out. Tough going for the 7 time champ this year - 2025 can’t come soon enough.

🔟 Lance Stroll 📉 [9]: If you consume one piece of F1 media this week, let it be Lance’s radio message regarding the offsetting tire strategy from his close competition. It’s an instant Lance classic.

11. Yuki Tsunoda [7]: Thrilled at the race result, tweeted “Getting a point at my home race means the world! It was incredible work by the whole team, especially the mechanics with the pit stop. I’m so happy with how the race went, I had some good overtakes and the support from everyone here has been amazing, thank you so much!” Good overtakes is right, another strong performance.

12. Oliver Bearman [6]: Ready to come out of hibernation…

13. Nico Hulkenberg [3]: Thinks his “really bad start” ultimately cost him points in Japan, explaining the car “went into anti-stall so we need to look into what happened. I think the pace was pretty good for midfield guys.”

14. Kevin Magnussen [1]: Moving up to P13 from a P18 start, he’s taking positives from Suzuka, saying it was “encouraging and giving some hope for the coming races that we can still be in the fight for points” and adding that the red flag helped those who were able to do a one stop hard-hard strategy, while he had a harder time with the one-stop medium-hard strategy.

15. Alex Albon [0]: On his first lap incident with Ricciardo, “He just squeezed me, there was nowhere to go.” No rain, but it’s pouring right now at Williams.

16. Zhou Guanyu [0]: On F1 Explains podcast, regarding his teammate “You're always looking at each other. The main thing is with the telemetry, with the data. There's always things you can learn from your team mate because no driver is the same.”

17. Daniel Ricciardo [0]: On his lap 1 incident says he didn’t know if Albon wanted to be there due to better traction on his soft tires, but he didn’t see him but always tries to assume someone is there, saying “It’s lap one, so I never tried to use the full width of the track and be completely ignorant” but concedes there obviously wasn’t enough room.

18. Esteban Ocon [0]: The team tried some different strategies but were not able to keep the competition behind them, but “it was a good test for us this weekend to see where we were exactly. I think probably progress for us in terms of qualifying.”

19. Pierre Gasly [0]: Contact with Ocon on lap 1 was “game over” for team, adding “The team says I was more than 30 points down on downforce…We kept going as you never know there might be another red flag…but I can’t recall when I had such a tough car balance throughout the whole race.”

20. Valtteri Bottas [0]: On F1 Explains podcast, regarding his teammate “I feel like we have good respect. We can really work together in terms of the set-up.” These two def seem to get along. Now I’m all warm and fuzzy.

21. Logan Sargeant [0]: Hoping for no major damage after he ran through the gravel trap late in the race, “disappointing mistake but I think a positive race knowing that the result could have been there to take”

Constructor’s Corner

🥇Red Bull [141]: Says they aren’t rushing their decision on who will be Max’s teammate next year, despite the pressure that Audi is putting on the driver market. Helmet Marko, on driver talk heating up in April said “It is ridiculous, but we won’t jump into this game ourselves. We will wait and see, and only then make the best choice later on.” Even though Checo seems to think he’ll know his fate sooner rather than later.

🥈Ferrari [120]: While Leclerc put on a tire management masterclass, Vasseur says there are no guarantees that their tire issues are completely resolved. “But I think this one is very well under control now. But what is true one day, it's not true the other day” with each track presenting different conditions and tire wear.

🥉McLaren [69]: Andrea Stella defends team strategy in a “complex” Japanese GP, saying “I think we were a little out of options because when we stopped Lando at the start, we kind of knew that Ferrari were ready to go to undercut us”

4️⃣ Mercedes [34]: Toto Wolff: The team is “live testing” as they try to find their feet with the W15. On last weekend, he added “I think we have a clear direction even though the qualifying and race result doesn’t reflect it at all.”

5️⃣ Aston Martin [33]: Contrary to last year’s development struggles, Aston’s upgrades for Suzuka were successful and instantly unlocked some performance gains. They picked up 3 and 5 tenths on Ferrari and Mercedes respectively.

6️⃣ RB [7]: Ricciardo is set to get a new chassis ahead of the Chinese GP next weekend. With Yuki happy and Danny needing to find pace, the team said it “makes the most sense” for him to get the update first and in an effort to find better performance in the car.

7️⃣ Haas [4]: Why they can continue to fight at the front of the midfield - a well rounded car, strong straight-line speed making the car difficult to overtake, good strategy, and clean pit stops.

8️⃣ Williams [0]: The front-right portion of Albon’s chassis was damaged during his lap 1 crash, and was sent back to the UK for repairs ahead of the Chinese GP next weekend. James Vowles said “In terms of the complexity of it, it’s enormous. The chassis is thousands and thousands of pieces that you're trying to bring together at the same time.” It aint as simple as just 3D printing another. They should have a spare available in time for Miami on May 5th.

9️⃣ Kick Sauber [0]: Bravi was happy with pit stop improvement, saying “right now we are not looking at maximising speed, but rather the consistency and reliability of our stops, which is what happened today.” and adding that “development is going well”

🔟 Alpine [0]: Sky F1’s Ted Kravitz suggest team principal Bruno Famin is already under pressure as the team tries to climb out of a deep hole. They’re working hard to bring upgrades to Miami, but we’ll see if it moves the needle.

Question (My answer)

I watched every lap live. And I paid for it Sunday. Was mighty sleepy. I concede I will be watching China on time delay however with that 3am EST start time.