Following on from his fourth consecutive Suzuka pole, Max Verstappen also made it four straight Japanese Grand Prix wins in a row. F1Technical’s senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his strategy analysis after Round 3 of the 2025 F1 season.
It was a triumphant weekend for the four-time world champion, who has been totally dominant on Saturday and again on Sunday at this track over all four years with the current generation of cars.
The Hasselt-born driver took his 64th career win, Red Bull secured its eighth triumph in Japan, the 123rd overall for the Christian Horner-led team.
Despite the slight disappointment for failing to win the Japanese Grand Prix, McLaren could celebrate a double podium with Lando Norris second and Oscar Piastri third, with the English team’s podium total in this race now up to 29.
Elsewhere, Lewis Hamilton’s replacement, Andrea Kimi Antonelli set two new records at Suzuka when he took the chequered flag in sixth place. He knocked Max Verstappen off the top of the tables for the youngest driver to ever lead a Grand Prix and to set the race fastest lap.
Hard compounds, single-stop strategy
After two race weekends with softer compounds, Pirelli brought the three hardest compounds of its tyre range to Suzuka. It meant that the C1, the hardest compound of the 2025 range, made its season debut at Suzuka, joined as usual by the C2 and the C3. That was not surprising considering the layout of the Suzuka circuit which is one of the toughest tracks on the calendar when it comes to tyres.
As for the strategy, most of the drivers elected to start the race on the mediums which gave a reasonable level of grip off the line, but it also enabled drivers to extend their first stint.
In fact, 15 drivers, all on the top eight rows, lined up on the starting grid having chosen the the yellow-banded tyre for the opening stint. The only exception was Ferrari’s seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton who opted for the Hard. On the back two rows, the places were split between Hard and Soft: Esteban Ocon and Gabriel Bortoleto chose the C1 while Lance Stroll and Jack Doohan the C3.
Almost the entire field made just the one stop, the quickest strategic option according to analysis of Friday’s data. The Hard compound was the near universal choice for the second stint, although Sainz and Lawson ran the race without using the hardest tyres, going for a Medium-Soft strategy instead. Stroll was the only driver to run all three compounds.
The longest stint of all came courtesy of Doohan who ran a set of Hards for 38 laps, while Sainz and Lawson went all the way to lap 33 on the Medium before pitting.
Asked to reflect on the 53-lap race from a tyre’s point of view, Pirelli’s motorsport director Mario Isola claimed that the Milan-based company was slightly surprised that there was “virtually no drop in lap time performance” on a track where thermal degradation usually play an important role.
“When the top six on the grid take the chequered flag in the very same order, it’s easy to characterise the race as boring. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say we witnessed the most thrilling show in the sport’s history, there was still some close racing. You only have to look at the top three, separated by just 44 thousandths in qualifying and then finishing within two seconds of each other in the race.
“After a fairly cautious first part, especially through the first sector, the most demanding from a tyre perspective, in the second part, all the drivers pushed all the way to the end.
Highlighting the consistent performance of Pirelli tyres, Isola noted that “14 of the 20 drivers set their fastest lap in the final five laps. It’s worth noting that Antonelli’s time of 1’30”965 was 2”741 quicker than last year’s fastest race lap, set by Verstappen, which shows just how much the performance has improved compared to 2024.
“On a track where thermal degradation has traditionally played a major role, today we saw virtually no drop in lap time performance with the Hard and Medium compounds, even over long stints. That was down to the low ambient and track temperatures, actually the lowest recorded at Suzuka since 2011.
“The other contributory factor is the improvements brought to the 2025 tyre range, specifically aimed at reducing this type of wear. Another of our technical objectives was to limit graining and today, even with these low temperatures, we saw almost no signs of this issue across the field,” concluded Isola.
