PACE ANALYSIS: Red Bull and McLaren neck and neck, Ferrari three tenths behind
Reigning champion Max Verstappen took a sensational pole position and victory at yesterday's Japanese Grand Prix, demonstrating his skills around the daunting Suzuka circuit. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his pace analysis from the Japanese round.
McLaren have been widely considered as the quickest team since the pre-season testing in Bahrain. However, Max Verstappen’s brilliance saw Red Bull keep up with the Woking-based outfit in Japan on a track which normally favours McLaren’s MCL39 due to its high-speed corners.
With Lando Norris finishing just fractions behind Verstappen, the two teams were total neck and neck in the 53-lap Suzuka race.
Looking at the data provided by F1DataAnalysis, the boxplot diagrams of the entire field looks fairly similar which is not surprising given that most of the drivers ran a very similar one-stop strategy with only a few variations across the field.
The data shows that Norris’ and Piastri's boxplot are almost identical while Verstappen's lap times generated a slightly different boxplot. Piastri's best lap time is slightly quicker than Norris', but the Briton's slowest one is better than the Australian's. By contrast, their average lap time and their median are almost identical.
While Verstappen achieved -understandably - a very similar average lap time, his median is placed slightly higher which shows a more even distribution of lap times considering his first and third quartile of lap times.
Considering the average lap time, Kimi Antonelli he was only 0.26s per lap slower than Verstappen. The 18-year-old had a very different boxplot though. Although he started on the 'standard' medium rubber, he pursued an offset strategy, extending his first stint until Lap 31, which meant that he pitted for new hards ten laps after the leading drivers completed their pit stop.
His offset strategy led to a much wider boxplot as he spent his last laps during his first stint on heavily worn tyres, albeit he was still able to display a competitive pace. As he switched to a new set of hards, he looked faster than the race leader, which explains why the first quartile of his lap is placed lower than Norris'. His median is placed much higher than his rivals', which was a result of his offset strategy.
Leclerc and Russell were neck on and neck across the entire Japanese Grand Prix. The average lap time of the Monegasque was 0.28s slower than Norris' while Russell suffered a deficit of 0.3s compared to his fellow countryman. While the Mercedes man looked slightly faster at times - mainly in the opening and the closing laps -, he was unable to put Leclerc under real pressure.
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton endured a difficult race in Japan on a track where he has been the second most successful behind Michael Schumacher. The Briton generated a boxplot of almost the same length as his former team-mate Russell, albeit his average was nearly half a second slower than Norris'.
Hamilton used an alternate strategy, starting on Pirelli's hards to then switch on to the medium. The inverse approach led to an offset strategy, albeit he still came into the pits a lap earlier than Antonelli, who used the standard medium-hard strategy. Hamilton's pace fluctuated all through the races as he looked very competitive at times, but he struggles for a consistent pace mainly on the mediums
The Briton's median lap time was placed much higher than his direct rivals, with it being on a similar level to Racing Bulls driver Isack Hajdar or his Mercedes replacement Antonelli. It was partly a result of his offset strategy, but what was more worrying when analysing his pace was the first quartile of his lap times as it was much higher than Antonelli's who was also on an offset strategy. The reason for that was than while Hamilton posted remarkable lap time on the initial laps of his second stint on the mediums, he fell back as the stint progressed.
