Max Verstappen has beaten his championship rival Charles Leclerc by a hundredth of a second to take pole position for the Japanese Grand Prix. The Red Bull driver hung on despite making an error on his final attempt, which puts him in the perfect position to take his second title.
Verstappen will become champion if he wins the race with fastest lap, regardless of the results of Leclerc and Perez. A win without fastest lap for the Dutchman would require Leclerc to be lower than second for Verstappen to no take the title. However, it was a messy session for Verstappen, he is under investigation following an incident with Lando Norris.
The Red Bull driver lost control on the exit of the flat-out 130R while on a slow lap and trying to get out of Norris’ way. When the Red Bull snapped sideways, Norris had to take to the grass to avoid him. Explaining what happened, Verstappen said “I was driving quite slow and tried to accelerate, but my tyres were quite cold, so I had a snap.”
For his part, Norris saw the incident very differently, insisting it was “quite clear” Verstappen had tried to defend his position on track. The Red Bull driver did find his way pass Norris, appearing to raise his hand to apologise
he told Sky Sports, “People always overtake before the last corner – as much as everyone always agrees to it. Everyone always does it. It doesn’t matter, he probably would’ve done the same in my situation, but I wouldn’t have swerved at him if I was in his situation.”
Carlos Sainz put his Ferrari third within a tenth of Verstappen, earlier in the session he looked to have the pace of Leclerc but was left five hundredths behind as his pace vanished in Q3. He went three and a half tenths ahead of Sergio Perez, the Mexican had topped Q2, but opted not to do a second run in Q3 after complaining about understeer.
Qualifying across the field was one of the closest of the year, Verstappen had been the favourite going into the sesson, but Ferrari were quicker than expected after practice.
Alpine have had the pace all weekend with Esteban Ocon going fifth a tenth faster than Lewis Hamilton, the Mercedes splitting the two cars going six hundredths faster than Fernando Alonso.
Mercedes appeared to struggle to find the pace they had in the wet on Friday, but conditions are said to be changeable on Sunday. All season, the Silver Arrows have been quicker in the race and changeable conditions seem always to favour Hamilton and Russell’s driving style
Alonso was faster than Red Bull’s Perez for much of qualifying before dropping down the order a little in the final session and allowing Ocon to end up the faster of the two drivers with an excellent lap from the Frenchman.
Mercedes suffered for the high drag levels of their car and Hamilton and Russell said they were losing in the region of 0.6-0.8secs on the straights to the front-runners. Despite the struggles, it continues showing that the team has made a huge step forward from where they had been in March.
Russell added, “This is the first circuit that has long straights but also has high downforce. Normally the circuits with the long straights – Spa, Monza, even Silverstone – you run low downforce, and the high-downforce circuits have short straights, and you don’t really see that defect in the straight-line speeds. That weakness has truly been exposed here.”
Sebastian Vettel will start his final race at Suzuka ninth ahead o Norris. The Englishman looking unable to recover from the incident with Verstappen earlier in the session as he tried to warm the tyres.
Vettel ran out of sequence in Q2 to ensure clean air, but he did leave himself at risk of being caught out by track position, but he initially climbed as high as fifth place. While he was shuffled down to tenth to still make it into the shootout for pole as the improvements came, he kept ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, who was eliminated in eleventh.
Vettel’s former teammate missed out on Q3 with a final sector which cost Ricciardo three hundredths of a second. It was an emotional session for Vettel, who is having his last race on a track he loves and where he has won four times, after his decision to retire at the end of the season.
Valtteri Bottas also lost time in sector one meaning he was also unable to improve, going ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and teammate Guanyu Zhou.
Mick Schumacher was fifteenth after his Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen was knocked out in Q1. The German has had the measure of Magnussen despite missing all of FP2 on Friday as the team changed the chassis on his car after he crashed the Haas on an in-lap in a wet FP1.
Alex Albon was sixteenth, the Williams driver missing out by five hundredths following a difficult Q1. The British-Thai driver had several lap times deleted for going wide at Spoon Curve, on his final run he dropped time in the middle sector and was knocked out.
Pierre Gasly struggled with braking throughout Q1, the Frenchman locking up at the hairpin to his frustration leaving him ahead of Magnussen.
Lance Stroll made the same mistake as Gasly, which cost him four-tenths and left him ahead of Nicolas Latifi. The Williams driver was always likely to start last because of a five-place grid drop for his crash with Zhou in Singapore.
