Track Interviews – Conducted by James Hinchcliffe
We’re going to start with third-place finisher Oscar Piastri. Twelfth career podium here in Suzuka. Started third, finished third. Was that a little bit a function of your fate being sort of sealed yesterday in qualifying?Oscar Piastri: Yes, correct. I think the pace today was really, really good and I was very happy with that. Obviously got close a few times and tried to mount a challenge, but track position around here is just so important. So, yeah, I think yesterday was the day where you effectively won the race and I didn’t do a good enough job. So, I’ll take the podium. I think there’s still a lot of positives to take out of this weekend. I think the pace was mega. Next time I just need to make sure I’m in a better position to use it.
You were the first of the top three to pit. Was that more of a defensive move against George Russell, or were you trying to force Red Bull’s hand and get Max in early?OP: Great question. I think for me it was more trying to just cover the guys behind. I was starting to struggle a little bit on the Medium and was in the window to take a pit stop anyway. So yeah, that was kind of the thinking there. I’ll speak to the team about what their plan was with it, but I think it was a good strategy. We were kind of a bit in no man’s land.
And you mentioned you tried to mount an attack on Lando. We heard some of the radio communication about trying to swap you guys. You thought you had the pace to catch Max. We heard your side of that conversation – what was the retort from the team and how much debate was there on whether to swap you two?OP: I mean, there wasn’t much to be honest. For me, I felt like I had really strong pace and felt like if I had the track position I could go and get Max. But that’s what happens when you qualify behind, unfortunately. So yeah, I at least asked the question and I think that was a fair response. I think it was a good race, and that’s how we want to go racing.
P2 on the day, Lando Norris. Front-row start, you gave it everything you had. It looked like a tough battle out there, but just came up a little bit short.Lando Norris: I guess just lost out yesterday. You know, Max drove a good race today, no mistakes, and the pace was too similar today to do anything more. Long race, a lot of pushing. It was a flat-out race from start to finish – tough, but just not enough today. Nothing special that we had that could get Max on. They were quick, and no mistakes like I said, so he deserved it.
You guys got very close in the pit stop though – the McLaren team giving you a great stop, you had that easy launch out side-by-side, two wheels in the grass. How did you see that incident?LN: It’s racing, I think. He was still ahead, it kind of squeezes into one, and Max is the last guy I expect to give me any space , you know, in a good way, in a racing way, so nothing more than that.
Lost a little bit of ground in the Drivers’ Championship, but a nice haul for the Constructors. Overall, positive weekend for the team?LN: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s still been a very good weekend. Didn’t get the positions that we wanted. We’re fighting for a win every weekend, but they deserved it – both Red Bull and Max deserved it this weekend. They’re quick. They’ve been catching up, they’ve obviously made some improvements, and as a team, we didn’t have enough this weekend. So we have to work harder for the next one. First and second in the Grand Prix so far – not a bad start.
And your winner of the Grand Prix here at Suzuka for the 64th time in his career, fourth time on the trot here in Japan – Max. It was a lights-to-flag victory. Looks pretty standard on paper, but those McLaren guys were pushing the whole race. Was it as nerve-racking from inside the car as it looked from outside?Max Verstappen: It was tough, you know, just pushing very hard – especially on the second stint. The two McLarens were pushing me very hard and it was a lot of fun out there. Not easy, of course, to manage the tyres, but yeah, I’m incredibly happy. It started off quite tough this weekend, but we didn’t give up. We kept improving the car and today it was in its best form. And of course, starting on pole, that really made it possible to win the race.
Given that it seems like McLaren has a bit of a car advantage over Red Bull right now, how important is it to execute on these opportunities when you start in front and keep that championship battle nice and tight?MV: Yeah, it’s very important to always try to maximise your performance and I think we did that very well this weekend.
Right, Max – it’s finally here in Japan. Like you say, fourth win in a row. You obviously love this place, this place loves you. Honda’s home track, your last race in Japan with Honda – just talk about what this place means to you.MV: It means a lot to me. It was in the back of my mind as well. On those last few laps, I was like, “Well, I need to try and stay ahead – it would be a great story.” Our final kind of farewell race together with Honda here in Japan. I’m incredibly proud of what we have achieved over all those years together. And I think this is like a perfect send-off.
Press Conference
Huge congratulations, Max. Your race engineer called it perfection over the radio. Is that how it felt inside the car?MV: Yeah, it was a fun race. I mean, the whole race I saw two orange cars in my mirror, and yeah, especially those last 20 laps, we were pushing quite hard out there. You could just feel the tyres were degrading more and more. But you had to keep on fighting it, basically being on the limit. But yeah, it was better than expected, to be honest. My race pace – I do think that probably the cooler track helped us out a bit. Less tyre overheating, and yeah, just very proud with this result. I think most of it of course was done yesterday being able to start from pole, because around here I think it’s just very hard to follow. You know, the cars are improving every single year, more downforce, and probably you’ll see it’s just a bit harder to follow. You only have one DRS zone as well here, so it’s very tough. Plus the degradation seemed quite low, so you do a one-stop. So I think that definitely helps. But still, we take it, we really maximised the weekend, and I’m very proud of everyone.
You maximised the weekend. At what point in the race did you think, “I’ve got this”?MV: It’s impossible to tell because you don’t really know how long the tyres are going to hold up. But I would say with like five laps to go, I felt like, “This is OK, the tyres are holding on to a normal extent, they’re not fully falling out of the window” So I was like, “well, from here on it’s just make no mistakes and it should be OK”.
Now, the closest Lando got was at pit exit. Can you give us your view of what happened there?MV: Yeah, I think the grass was a bit – it was not really well cut on the right-hand side. So I think Lando saw that as well, and he made sure that it was nicely cut.
Any more comments? MV: What do you want me to say?
Well nothing. If you feel that’s it, then that’s it!MV: Next question then!
Look, Max, where do we go from here? Is this performance circuit-specific or do you feel you can now challenge at every race?MV: I don’t think so, but honestly, like I said, today we take it. It was very hard to pass around here. Bahrain – completely different track, very tough on tyres, tyres overheating as well. We still have work to do. But it does show that if we really nail everything, we can be up there. But from our side, we want to be better than just sometimes being up there. So we just keep working hard and just see where we can be at in Bahrain already. Hopefully we keep on improving the car, you know, with the through corner balance, and then hopefully it unlocks also just in general a bit more pace.
Alright, very well done to you, Max. Thank you very much. Lando, let’s come to you. Many congratulations. You showed great pace today. Just how do you rate this P2?LN: Tough. I mean, I could see Max quite clearly for the whole race, but just couldn’t make any inroads from that point onwards. So I think him in clean air was enough to stay in that position and he didn’t make any mistakes. He drove a good race. So, I don’t know, like he said, the race was won yesterday in hindsight, and I guess we always kind of know the better position you start, the more chance you have of winning. But I think our pace was probably slightly better, but not enough to get through the dirty air, kind of get into the DRS, and then passing is a whole other story because it’s pretty much impossible to pass here. So yeah, I think it was a good race. We tried some things. Maybe we could have tried a bit more with strategy. Overcut or undercut – we just boxed on the same lap for some reason. So some things we’ll discuss, but good points for us as a team. Decent points for me. Of course, would have liked a little bit more, but have to take second sometimes.
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