This morning against my better judgement I was sitting in front of my television at 6.30 am with a cup of coffee. The reason being the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka was about to start and I was expecting an exciting race.
The talk of rain had peaked my interest enough to get me out of bed early on a Sunday morning. Those that know me Sundays are my only rest day and was a promise I made to myself when I was in the army that being kicked out of bed at 4.30 am each morning especially on a Sunday was never going to happen again. Sport or a family emergency are the only allowed exceptions to the rule.
There was no rain due to the rain falling over night and all it had done was wash away the rubber that all the cars had helped lay down during practice and qualifying rounds. This rubber gives the track a stickiness offering more grip s without it drivers will have to be a little cautious for the opening laps.
The Suzuka track is well known as being a difficult track to over take with one straight offering the drag reduction system (DRS). This is on a par with Monaco where if you drive the right lines no one can pass you. Rain was the only hope of some excitement and the track was basically bone dry and would be dry within a lap or two as the cars with the downforce and aerodynamics can move 2000 liters within seconds.
The race started with Verstappen on pole position and the two McLarens right behind him and that is how this oh so boring race finished. After 90 minutes I literally saw 3 over takes and they were all for the minor places. The gaps between the cars were basically the same from lap 1 till the end of lap 53.
This was the 3rd time in Formula One history the top 6 finished in the same order as they qualified. Unsurprisingly Monaco had two of those races with Hamilton the only driver to move up one place in the top 10 cars. There was also not one crash and on top of that the tyres did not grain and have performance drop off due to the lower temperatures.
McLaren should have used different strategies wit their 2 cars versus Verstappen, butt no they pitted when Verstappen pitted. Free air out in front is where they get their speed from ad the car performs at it's best so surely that is what they had to do and their tactics or strategy was non existent. All the cars suffered from the so called dirty air generated from the car in front similar to turbulence and as soon as they went into the 1 second gap it was not easy to get close to their rivals.
Suzuka has to be the worst track ever designed for motor racing and I really hope it is either scrapped from the schedule or is redesigned making it more spectator friendly. This was like follow my leader and you could not call this a race even though Verstappen's car is rated as the 4th fastest car. I should have known better and stayed in bed as the weather man lied and was wrong by a good 10 hours.