The Japanese Grand Prix is where the race for the 2022 Formula 1 world title ends. Max Verstappen, among all the controversies, is world champion for the second time. Another easy won for the Dutchman, which hides a great job done behind the scenes, starting from Saturday’s brilliantly pole position, which until now was secured mostly by the Ferrari F1-75 cars.
Having said that, let’s analyze the Suzuka race based on the data gathered from the short race, as the drivers crossed the finish line with only one stint on the intermediate tires.
Every driver made the same choice of starting the Japanese Grand Prix on the Intermediate tyres, despite several drivers completed the preparation laps on the full wets. A somewhat extreme choice, with Max Verstappen confirming that the track conditions were worse than before shortly after the red flag.
After the long break they all set off on full wet, but Red Bull’s Dutchman immediately felt that in just a few laps the conditions would become good for intermediates. Sebastian Vettel and Nicholas Latifi were the first to mount these compounds. Looking at the times, the condition was still on the limit. Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc returned to the pit lane on the next lap for intermediates. Few others, including Fernando Alonso and Mick Schumacher, stayed out, perhaps to take advantage of a possible yellow flag or hoping for a Safety Car given the difficult conditions. Sebastian Vettel and Nicholas Latifi’s decision proved to be smart, with both finishing the race in the top ten.
The degradation was quite high, as was expected. This circuit is front limited, so the front wears out quite quickly. Unfortunately Charles Leclerc suffered greatly from the degradation. After only six laps on the Intermediates, in fact, his times literally collapsed. At a certain moment, the Monegasque even asked to stop for a new set of tyres, but returning he would have lost five positions and would have ended up behind Fernando Alonso, without the possibility of recovering the lost time.
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Everyone was starting to wear the tyres, to have less rubber and therefore less temperature. It was therefore better to stay out trying to keep the position on the track. For the Red Bull cars, especially Max Verstappen, the situation was very different. The Dutchman suffered very little from degradation.
In numbers we are talking about a time loss of just 0.18s per lap for Max Verstappen. Minor, but very similar to Mercedes, which was losing about 2 tenths per lap. On the other hand, Charles Leclerc lost about three tenths each lap, due to a lot more degradation. Once again the Maranello team’s car was not kind to its compounds.
Formula 1 Japanese GP 2022: race pace
We have often mentioned how the F1-75s put a lot of energy on the tires. A double-edged sword because, although it helps a lot in qualifying, it often doesn’t give an advantage in the race. The Ferrari driver also pushed too much in the early laps, causing the compound to overheat.
Observing the pace during the race in the single stint, we see that Max Verstappen kept an average pace of 1.1 seconds lower than Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. Sergio Perez produced a very similar pace even if, in fact, he was not able to overtake the Monegasque driver on the track. Mercedes didn’t have a good pace, or at least they didn’t manage to express it at the Suzuka circuit on Sunday.
Mercedes did in fact gamble everything on the rain but the adverse conditions did not give the silver arrows the expected boost. The W13 does not have much efficiency, so in dry conditions it could not have been competitive. They had loaded the car a lot in view of the rain, but even all this was not enough. The lack of speed on the straight of the German cars was evident.
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