2015 Japanese Grand Prix lap times

Despite having lost pole position to his team mate in qualifying, Lewis Hamilton lapped a full second quicker in the race.

The Mercedes pair both took sets of hard tyres for the final stint of the race – Hamilton’s were new, Rosberg’s used – and Hamilton’s first lap out of the pits was fractionally more than a second quicker than Rosberg managed just two laps earlier.

No one else got within one-and-three-quarter seconds of Hamilton’s pace in the race – a remarkable turnaround following the team’s sub-par performance at Singapore one week ago.

Hamilton was particularly pleased with how good his car’s set-up was as all the teams had missed out on dry running on Friday due to rain.

“This has been a circuit that I can honestly say that I’ve struggled [at] through all the years that I’ve come here,” said Hamilton, “but one that I’ve loved driving.”

“You really want to come here and dominate at a track like this. I was able to get the balance in the right place, my engineers did an amazing job – Bonno, Ricky and just the whole crew did a great job to get the car, with the short amount of time we had, in a beautiful window.”

“It was better today than it was even in qualifying. I was really able to work on my lines and improve and at the front there it was just a beautiful… it’s like sailing. When you go through the corners here, it’s flowing.”

After setting his fastest lap of 1’36.145 Hamilton back off considerably – his next-best lap was 1.7 seconds slower – yet he still had enough in hand to win by

2015 Japanese Grand Prix lap times

All the lap times by the drivers in seconds. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, click name to highlight, right-click to reset:

2015 Japanese Grand Prix fastest laps

Each driver’s fastest lap:

Rank	Driver	Car	Fastest lap	Gap	On lap
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’36.145		33
2	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’37.147	1.002	31
3	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’37.906	1.761	32
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’38.035	1.890	32
5	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Mercedes	1’38.136	1.991	39
6	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Mercedes	1’38.167	2.022	35
7	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso-Renault	1’38.237	2.092	32
8	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1’38.241	2.096	41
9	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1’38.331	2.186	43
10	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull-Renault	1’38.366	2.221	36
11	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1’38.591	2.446	50
12	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1’38.595	2.450	51
13	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Toro Rosso-Renault	1’38.686	2.541	16
14	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-Renault	1’38.898	2.753	32
15	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	1’39.343	3.198	28
16	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Honda	1’39.614	3.469	45
17	Felipe Nasr	Sauber-Ferrari	1’40.088	3.943	39
18	Jenson Button	McLaren-Honda	1’40.121	3.976	31
19	Will Stevens	Manor-Ferrari	1’41.452	5.307	44
20	Alexander Rossi	Manor-Ferrari	1’41.467	5.322	35

2015 Japanese Grand Prix

Browse all 2015 Japanese Grand Prix articles

13 comments on “Hamilton fastest by a second at Suzuka”

PorscheF1 (@xtwl)
27th September 2015, 15:50

Fact Vettel finished so close to Rosberg should really concern the him.

gary
27th September 2015, 17:30

Yeah…. That was weird man. It was apparent that Mercedes is faster than Ferrari, but it also became apparent that Rosberg was not so much compared to Vettel.
hamman
27th September 2015, 17:34

Rosberg has started to have serious trouble staying ahead of Vettel.

Digitalrurouni
27th September 2015, 15:57

I think it could also be a case of management. Rosberg doesn’t need to have a huge gap ahead of Vettel when he crosses the finish line. He just needs to be a bit ahead ofnhim. Why waste resources as in engine wear and tear etc by having a bigger gap than needed? Playing devil’s advocate here. I mean Rosberg with his fastest lap had quite a gap with Vettel after all no? Or it could be that Vettel in the Ferrari is a better racing package than Rosberg in the Merc which also points out that both man and machine need to be in harmony to win in F1 as well.

ceng
27th September 2015, 17:31

I’ll take the second one, thank you. :D

Luca Nuvolari (@nuvolari71)
27th September 2015, 16:35

I really regret to say that, because I said Rosberg was a better package a year ago. Lewis is on a different planet to Nico now. I cannot stand Lewis, I really cannot but when his head is under a helmet, he’s damn good. Nico is only an outstanding second driver and i bite my tongue by saying it. He needs to look into himself for next year or he will be another Rubens or another Felipe. The mental dominance Lewis is building is very dangerous for Nico. Today he wouldn’t even challenge Sebastian if the undercut wouldn’t work.

Understeer (@abdelilah)
28th September 2015, 14:05

@Luca Nuvolari
I think he missed his chance in 2014, he will have to fight this time not only Lewis but Vettel who his eager to mark his territory, he is giving his all but deep down he knows he can’t match drivers like Lewis or Vettel under normal circumstances.

jale
27th September 2015, 17:32

Yeah I was suspicious at the time that Rosberg was also lacking the pace.

Ivan Vinitskyy (@ivan-vinitskyy)
27th September 2015, 18:33

Is there a stat for the fastest fastest lap of the race? meaning the gap to the second fastest driver….

ColdFly F1 - @coldfly (@)
27th September 2015, 19:28

I’ll bite! @ivan-vinitskyy
How does ‘fastest fastest lap’ differ from ‘fastest lap’? (which you can see above)
Isn’t the gap to the second fastest driver equal to ‘gap to fastest driver’ less 1.002sec (i.e. gap between Ros and Ham)??
1. Ivan Vinitskyy (@ivan-vinitskyy)
  27th September 2015, 19:46
  
  @coldfly My measure of ‘fastness’ in fastest lap of the race is the difference between best and second best drivers’ times. Yes in this case the value is 1.002 which I think makes Hamilton’s time quite fast. What I wanted to know if analyze all fastest laps, perhaps for the last 5 years, and see where it stacks up because it does seem quite unusual.