Welcome to Monday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
This week’s Caption Competition winner is @DiezCilindros:
After three years struggling at the back, Albon gets the taste of a front seat.
@DiezCilindros
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Fred Schechter!
On this day in motorsport
- Born on this day in 1955: Two-time F1 race starter Toshio Suzuki
- 35 years ago today Minardi achieved the only front row start of their 340 F1 races. Pierluigi Martini lapped just 0.067s slower than pole-winner Gerhard Berger, in his first race for McLaren, at Phoenix.
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Jere (@jerejj)
10th March 2025, 6:50
Regarding yesterday’s Suzuka race 2: Thus far, only one team has won in 2025 & likewise, only one driver has achieved pole positions.
How the stewards handled Ota’s illegal advantage-gaining was a bit too FIA-esque, with only the late SC period making the 5-second time penalty properly impactful.
Iwasa taking the lead into T1 gave a strong deja vu feeling from Saturday, but on this occasion, his maiden victory chance went away due to strategy.
Despite this race being the first since 2019 without a mandated pit stop window, I was still surprised by how many did their mandatory pit stops away within the first two laps.
Igor Fraga, in turn, fared the best among the non-Japanese drivers, even challenging Nojiri in the latter stages.
I didn’t see a 2024 Miami GP situation coming at all, i.e., the SC picking up someone other than the leader, which fortunately was short enough for everyone below him to catch the Docomo Dandelion duo within the remaining race distance.
Mog
10th March 2025, 9:45
The winner of the caption competition is very very good. Well done @DiezCilindros!
Diez Cilindros (@diezcilindros)
10th March 2025, 19:46
Thank you! :).
Frank
10th March 2025, 9:55
Berger outqualified Senna in their first race as team mates? The same exploit of Hakkinen is well known, but I did not know about Berger.