ROTR: Japanese GP 2025

[TomPryce]

The race - diabolically boring.
Stroll - WTF was that?

[RAK]

Lance Stroll absolutely living up to his surname.

[rachel1990]

1. Lance Stroll. Dead last, only car lapped and had no pace.

2. Mclaren. Could have tried to win the race thinking outside the box (they had two cars in the top three) and they couldn't even do that.

Hm the race. Snooze fest wasn't it.

[Ducktanian]

2025 Japanese Grand Prix - Dear lord that was dull.

"In the end, all 20 pilots see the flag. This fits this race in which, let's be honest, simply almost nothing happened..."

"That's it? That's all the highlights of that race?" - Oscar Piastri

[Alextrax52]

Lance Stroll: Qualified last, finished last and was the only driver to be lapped. God help the amount of results he wastes if next year’s Aston Martin is a Newey rocketship

McLaren: Proving once again that they don’t have the killer instinct or ruthlessness of 2000-2004 Ferrari or 2010-2013 Red Bull. They’d better pray this year’s Red Bull falls away in development like last year otherwise I’d back Max for another driver’s crown

HM: The race: That was a bit of a bore fest wasn’t it

[IceG]

The race - diabolically boring.
Stroll - WTF was that?

My thoughts exactly.

This is possibly a problem with near perfect cars with excellent reliability and supreme drivers racing on classic circuits. The artificial horrors that are street circuits, which are being created these days, do seem to produce action, possibly because they build in jeopardy and thus do not allow the best cars and drivers to consistently demonstrate their strengths and skills, unlike pure circuits like Suzuka. But it is all about the show after all...

And then there was Stroll. A full pit-stop off and the only car to get lapped. And DBTMOTR at 10 places behind Alonso. There is no consistency or sparkle or energy - just resignation. There is an empty seat right there, right now.

[Spectoremg]

Apart from what's been said:
Norris for doing his best to force a safety car with his petulant tussle with Max at the pit lane exit.
The pit lane friendly tv coverage.

[James1978]

For something a bit different than McLaren strategy, Stroll and the race being boring - I'll say Tsunoda getting driver of the day (or the whole Red Bull 2nd driver stuff) - nobody is getting near Max and that's that.

[You-Gee-Eee-Day]

Lance Stroll - for being Lance Stroll.

[mario]

2. Mclaren. Could have tried to win the race thinking outside the box (they had two cars in the top three) and they couldn't even do that.

That said, we have two teams operating with very different mentalities that, in turn, push them towards different strategies.

In the case of Red Bull, the priority is giving everything to Max to win the drivers championship at the expense of the constructors championship, whilst McLaren's priorities are biased towards winning the constructors championship.

That mentality seems to push McLaren towards a much more defensive approach - in their case, the priority was to pit Piastri first in response to Mercedes pitting Russell, allowing them to maintain track position over him and thus secure a podium finish. However, that is potentially what also triggered Red Bull to pit Verstappen in response, given they might have thought McLaren were going to use Piastri to undercut Verstappen (given Russell seems to have set fairly quick times on his new hard tyres when he came out of the pits and seems to have aimed to use a similar undercut approach against Piastri).

Now, I wonder if part of the reason for pitting Norris the following lap after Piastri was also to avoid the situation they had at the Hungaroring last year, where Piastri had been leading, but Norris ended up ahead of him due to pitting first. Track position would therefore have been maintained between their drivers, their drivers could feel they were being treated relatively fairly, and the more defensive strategy would minimise any potential loss in points that could occur for the team as a whole.

[dr-baker]

Carlos Sainz got fined for missing the National Anthem before the race. Because he was at the medical centre receiving medical treatment for an upset stomach. I understand that they reduced the fine by more than 50% as he had a valid reason, but i reckon the fine should have been nothing at all if a driver is receiving medical attention.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/carlo ... /10710494/

https://metro.co.uk/2025/04/06/f1-star- ... -22858694/