Max Verstappen produced a pole position lap to remember at Suzuka, pipping Lando Norris to the top spot by just 12 thousandths of a second.
Every grand prix pole position this year has been decided by less than a tenth of a second. This was the closest since Charles Leclerc beat Sergio Perez to pole for the Belgian Grand Prix last year by 0.011 seconds, though on that occasion Verstappen was almost six tenths of a second faster than both of them, but was relegated to 11th on the grid by a power unit change penalty.
Verstappen’s pole position was the 104th for Red Bull since the team was founded 20 years ago. They now have as many pole positions as the record-holding driver, Lewis Hamilton, who is on 104.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Red Bull need three more pole positions to draw level with Lotus, which is fifth on the all-time list with 107.
Verstappen converted his pole position into his fourth consecutive victory in the Japanese Grand Prix. That is the most for any driver – Michael Schumacher was the only other to manage three in a row.The McLaren drivers chased Verstappen home, the trio covered by just 2.129 seconds at the line. The same three drivers filled the podium places at this race two years earlier, Verstappen ahead of Norris and Oscar Piastri, but the gaps were rather larger then: Norris was 19s behind and Piastri took the chequered flag 36s after the winner.
Last weekend’s podium was the closest at any race since the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix. Norris was second on that occasion too, as Carlos Sainz Jnr won and third-placed Hamilton was a mere 1.269s behind.
Hamilton finished seventh last weekend behind his replacement at Mercedes. Andrea Kimi Antonelli continued his tremendous start to his first Formula 1 season at Suzuka.
On his first visit to one of the world’s most challenging circuits, the teenager brought his car home sixth, just 1.2 seconds behind his considerably more experienced team mate.
This is true but somewhat misleading, as F1 has changed its points distributions over the years. When Hamilton made his debut only the top eight finishers scored points. It was only extended to cover the top 10 in 2010.
One other driver did finish all of their first three races in the top 10 during that time but did not score points in each, as they would today. That was Heikki Kovalainen, who made his debut in the same race as Hamilton:
| Driver | Race one | Race two | Race three |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lewis Hamilton | 3rd | 2nd | 2nd |
| Heikki Kovalainen | 10th | 8th | 9th |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | 4th | 6th | 6th |
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Isack Hadjar scored the first points of his career with eighth place. Alexander Albon took ninth, which means Williams have beaten their 2024 points total of 17 after just three races – they now have 19.
Fernando Alonso became the last driver this year to register a finish, in 11th place. Had he finished three places lower he would have equalled his worst-ever start to a season over three rounds – a far cry from his excellent start to life at Aston Martin two years ago.
For the first time this year all 20 drivers finished. They nearly all stayed on the lead lap as well – only Alonso’s team mate Lance Stroll dropped a lap down.
It was a processional affair, however. In the top 10, only Hamilton and Hadjar exchanged places from start to finish. In total, 11 drivers finished in the same position they started – only one less than last year’s notorious processional Monaco Grand Prix.
Over to you
Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Japanese Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2025 Japanese Grand Prix
- McLaren has to accept upsetting either of its drivers sometimes – Stella
- Verstappen ‘can test our car, I look forward to seeing his disappointment’ – Norris
- Verstappen insists McLaren domination claim was ‘no joke’ after Piastri’s doubt
- Extra mandatory pit stop won’t create more passing at tracks like Suzuka – Sainz
- Mercedes took note of Verstappen’s out-lap tactics after stunning Suzuka pole position
Jere (@jerejj)
8th April 2025, 12:55
Max Verstappen’s pole position time became the new outright track record, but beyond this aspect, the first-ever sub-1m27s lap time around the Suzuka circuit.
Furthermore, two consecutive rounds have now featured new outright track records with Suzuka also getting a new official lap record, finally beating the 2005 race for the honor.
Red Bull Racing achieved their eighth victory in Suzuka with which they overhauled McLaren & Ferrari for circuit-specific victory amounts.
Andrea Antonelli is the only driver who achieved a sub-1m31s lap time in the race.
Additionally, he became the youngest driver to lead a race & set the fastest lap.
The first Japanese GP with every single driver reaching the chequered flag since the 2016 edition & the first overall since last season’s Spanish GP.
Ultimately only the podium trio lapped Lance Stroll.
Coventry Climax
8th April 2025, 13:01
Oh, only the podium trio..
That improves Stroll’s results to just 17/20th part of crap; much better. Can’t wait to hear Daddy’s excuse this time.
S Arkazam
8th April 2025, 13:17
He’ll probably claim that he finished just after the top three, and before the other 16 drivers.
Jere (@jerejj)
8th April 2025, 15:40
Coventry Climax S Arkazam
I couldn’t agree more, but yes, he indeed finished the race between third & fourth-place finishers in physical track position order, meaning that no lead lap-finisher from P4 downwards did any lapping.
S Arkazam
8th April 2025, 18:43
@jere,
Do you use AI to prepare your comments?
(I honestly like to know, as some parts have all the hallmarks)
Jere (@jerejj)
9th April 2025, 9:04
S Arkazam I certainly don’t use AI at all & to be honest, I don’t even know how to use AI in the first place.
I simply think about possible stats throughout (& sometimes already before) GP weekends & gather them up so that I can just copy-paste them into stat articles.
I also gather up stat references when I hear or see anything about single stats & especially records.
Furthermore, I always remove whatever is already mentioned in the articles or by someone else in the comment sections before posting & therefore I only post whatever previously added note isn’t mentioned at all.
All in all, a simple way of doing things, nothing special.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
9th April 2025, 9:05
Not one to typically defend Lance. But was he racing? He basically didn’t get featured at all on the feed, and obviously he stopped very early. But whenever I checked the timings he was basically always half a minute behind whomever was running second last, more like Aston were using it as a testing session, trying something out.
If he genuinely was racing then that’s pretty grim, he can be thankful to the director that despite it being a processional / bit boring race, they spared him the ignominy of putting him on screen.
Bertie
8th April 2025, 14:12
Norris set his own sub-1:27.0 time before Max did. Max was of course faster in the end, but still, his was not the first lap.
Jere (@jerejj)
8th April 2025, 15:38
Bertie Sorry, my bad. I simply forgot.
MG1982 (@mg1982)
8th April 2025, 16:48
Yeah, but that’s not a record on it’s own, an official record etc because the session wasn’t over. Maybe just a note of the record article.
SteveP
8th April 2025, 17:07
Not really correct, in any sporting event where the competitors can sequentially set better heights, distances, or times you can have multiple records with each following competitor able to break the previous record.
Renee (@renee)
9th April 2025, 15:21
Berties point was that the pole lap of Max wasn’t the first time ever a sub 1:27 lap time at Suzuka was achieved. Lando had the first ever time under 1:27. The fact that Max went faster later, doesn’t matter here.
Dex
8th April 2025, 17:40
This statistic about leading the race is really meaningless though. It’s a technicality.
Ferdi
10th April 2025, 7:07
A lot of stats are. Or they are at the minimum not representative. That’s the nature. I would look at them from the fun perspective rather than looking for a narrative in them.
Zach Bigalke (@bigalke)
8th April 2025, 18:29
Lando broke the 87-second barrier as well, and if I’m not mistaken he posted the time before Max.
Zach Bigalke (@bigalke)
8th April 2025, 18:29
Sorry to pile on, I missed that Bertie already pointed this out.
Coventry Climax
8th April 2025, 12:57
Sorry, I fail to understand how that is of impact or misleading with respect to Antonelli’s finishing positions, compared to Hamilton. They were all sixth position at most.
It does impact Kovalainen’s results, but then he wasn’t mentioned in the F1 social media post quote.
MG1982 (@mg1982)
8th April 2025, 13:07
+1
S Arkazam
8th April 2025, 13:24
As Kovalainen finished the third race in 2007 87s behind Hamilton, he was technically the most recent F1 driver to finish its first three races in the top 10 ;)
Coventry Climax
8th April 2025, 14:24
I recognised that, but that’s where positions are concerned, but this was about points and a misleading post that never mentioned positions in the first place.
Alesici
8th April 2025, 13:17
I feel like it’s unusual for only 1 driver to have been lapped in a full length F1 race without a safety car or red flag. Has this happened before?
Coventry Climax
8th April 2025, 14:27
I feel it’s unusual for someone with the talents of Lance to be competing in F1 for what, seven, eight years in a row now? I’m sure that’s reason/grounds for a lot of stats noone wants to ever be known for.
Edvaldo
8th April 2025, 15:02
This was a very strange race. They were pushing, the tyres were taking the abuse just fine, nothing was happening.
If Canada 2010 was also a very strange race, that inspired how the early years of Pirelli would look like, this one I hope they don’t use as a reference for anything. Maybe of how a race should not be, at all costs.
Jere (@jerejj)
8th April 2025, 15:42
Alesici I think the same has happened in the past but for now, I struggle to think of any other fully neutralization-free race with only one driver lapped as a whole, so definitely unusual at the very least, if not entirely unheard of.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
8th April 2025, 14:11
Surprised about vettel still having more poles than verstappen, but I think those red bulls were relatively better in quali, while in the races they weren’t overly dominant compared to other eras.
JonnyT
8th April 2025, 14:58
A lot of Vettel’s poles in the DRS era were when use of DRS in qualifying was unrestricted; you could open it at any point during your lap. That helped Red Bull a lot, as they could run more wing for the race, but still get the straight-line speed in qualifying to get pole.
Coventry Climax
8th April 2025, 15:11
From wikipedia, so numbers might be off slightly:
Vettel had 299 GP starts total, with 57 poles (19.1%)
From those starts, 114 were for Red Bull, where he scored the total of 44 poles (38,9%)
Verstappen had 212 GP starts and 41 poles (19.3%)
From those starts, 207 were for Red Bull, where he scored the total of 41 poles (19,8%)
So yes, I think it’s safe to say Red Bull overall had more quali dominance in the Vettel years.
Another thought:
Red Bull promoted Verstappen after just 5 races with Toro Rosso! That turned out well enough in his case, but it shows they’re fooling around with drivers since forever.
Jere (@jerejj)
8th April 2025, 15:45
Coventry Climax After 23 races actually. The entire 2015 season with 19 + the first four 2016 rounds.
Coventry Climax
8th April 2025, 17:03
Ah yes, stupid of me.
Edvaldo
8th April 2025, 17:34
They were very conservative with Max actually. He came in as very fast and capable, and they could’ve promoted him in 2015 already, but didn’t, probably because RB11 wasn’t even that much better than the STR that season, both teams suffering with weak and unreliable Renault engines.
And thinking about it now, they did with Kvyat the same thing they did now with Lawson. Vergne was the other more reasonable option to replace Vettel, and they passed on him to take Kvyat, who lost the seat later, was demoted, and could never recover from that.
Roy Beedrill
9th April 2025, 5:09
Max obviously did more than 5 (five) GP starts for Toro Rosso. :) It’s always better not to rely 100% on Wikipedia.
El Pollo Loco
8th April 2025, 14:35
Way to brag about Hamilton while trying to make it sound like it was about RBR achieving a lot of poles. lol
Coventry Climax
8th April 2025, 15:16
That’s ok, we grant them their fun. We all know it was mainly the car. I mean, look at the Bottas statistics at Mecedes, and then compare that to his statistics while at other teams. If that’s no clue, then what is?
(I’m not sure I’ll be allowed to post ever again here, so if not: Bye all)
El Pollo Loco
9th April 2025, 0:57
Of course, any good driver would have won many titles in that car, but only one of the best of the best would have been as generally dominant as Lewis. And, in 2021, Bottas would have stood no chance. There’s only two drivers of Lewis’ era that could have done the same (Max and Alonso). So, it doesn’t detract from my respect for Lewis. Just the minority of fans who claim the car wasn’t a necessary component of his dominance.
DH
9th April 2025, 5:41
Also look at Russel’s stats in a Williams vs those in the Mercedes. With Hamilton it was 100% the car
Drg
10th April 2025, 14:42
@coventry
No worries – I am with you
Having to compare years of a team efforts with multiple WC drivers to a single guys achievement must be upsetting for some on here.
But, you know – it was the car – as if he never had teammates in the same kit.
Such ridiculously naff argument given the opposition position
Much as I love the more mature Alonso – it is unlikely he could have handled these pair in qualifying..
Be good to point out that Hamilton achieved the same percentage of race – poles within a race or two of Senna.
No one gets near Jim really but sample size plays a part – until you realise the other hundreds of races outside of F1 – one of which killed him.
F1statsfan (@f1statsfan)
8th April 2025, 15:02
“Verstappen converted his pole position into his fourth consecutive victory in the Japanese Grand Prix. ”
Max has now an above 80% pole to win conversion rate much higher than any other driver with more than 1 pole.
Max is the 4th driver to achieve 10 consecutive seasons with at least 1 win (Prost was first then Schumacher followed by Hamilton and now Verstappen). Max is the only driver to do it with 1 team and at age 27 – Lewis is next youngest at 31.
An Sionnach
8th April 2025, 17:20
A sign of consistent greatness! Prost, Schumacher, Hamilton… Max.
El Pollo Loco
9th April 2025, 1:02
Also, a sign of consistently having a great car. This is the first year Max definitely shouldn’t be winning races, getting poles and definitely shouldn’t be winning a title, but he’s done the first two and might do the latter. In terms of consistency, I’d put Alonso above Hamilton. He’s never had a season where he didn’t get all there was to get out of the car. I’d tag 2007 as possibly a sole exception. No one in their right mind would claim FA isn’t winning as many titles in the Mercedes as Lewis.
SteveP
9th April 2025, 7:12
I’m sort of feeling that the main cause of that is McLaren – collectively: Drivers and Team. Oscar not quite getting there yet and Lando, being Lando. Then layer on the team strategy.
F1statsfan (@f1statsfan)
9th April 2025, 7:43
I would say that Max also shouldn’t have been winning races from 2016-2019 when certainly Mercedes were very dominant and the Renault engine was just bad and unreliable but also the Ferrari was faster with that “FIA can’t discover the trick so tell us and we won’t punish you” engine.
Still he won 10 races before he finally got a car that could potentially challenge for the championship and won races on a more regular basis. Then when he finally got the best car of the field in 2022 and 2023 he dominated like no other driver had done before.
Compare that to Lewis that in 11 seasons had a car capable of winning the championship and with exception of 2009 and 2013 had cars that on a semi regular basis could challenge for a win.
Edvaldo
9th April 2025, 18:01
Ricciardo won races just the same from 16-18 though.
Red Bull was not the best car in this period, but had those odd races in which they were very competitive/the best car, just like happened last season. Mercedes was flying in Las Vegas, but was 4th fastest overall.
Russell has 3 wins in what was not the best car, but two of them were in weekends when it was very competitive and perfectly capable of winning a race, Brazil ’22 and Las Vegas ’24.
And Max then, Mexico was his turf even before he got a car to be a champion, should’ve won even more there than he did, as he was the fastest in ’19 as well but had that penalty for not slowing down to flags.
AlanD
9th April 2025, 18:37
Statsfan, that surprised me, that there is no-one with two poles, two wins. Before I saw your observation, I’d have guessed that you’d have to limit it to drivers with at least three poles, maybe more, to get a meaningful statistic that you could use to rank drivers. I’m not sure its a stat to shout about, as leading from pole to flag might mean it is a processional race with no overtaking up and down the field, so I guess it is more interesting to ask who has won most races starting from the second row of the grid or lower.
AlanD
9th April 2025, 19:02
Stats like this may be interesting, but they are a reflection of the sport and society rather than the individual driver. For example, Max holds the record for youngest GP winner, aged 18, whilst Hamilton didn’t get the chance to show what he could do in an F1 car until he was 21 or 22 years of age, and going back further, Alain Prost’s debut was at the age of 25 and that was normal back then. Graham Hill was 29 on his F1 debut, and Damon Hill was 31. All of these stats like most F1 starts, youngest pole sitter, most WDCs in succesion, etc, all make good pub quiz questions, but they don’t really tell us anything about the drivers.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
8th April 2025, 17:17
Mmm, another thing I find interesting is that hamilton and red bull not only have the same amount of poles but got them in a very similar period: hamilton started in 2007, while red bull has been around since 2005, so it’s not like we’re comparing ferrari to a driver, we’re comparing a similar amount of entries, except red bull have 2 cars each time, but most of the time 1 competitive driver.
Alejandro
8th April 2025, 17:56
Hamilton drove the Constructors winning car EIGHT years… Next to teammates who had a combined ONE GP win before joining him in that unbeatable car.
Max only drove the Constructors winning car TWO times, and he’s more than half way to lewis’ few remaining records.
IF Max gets the Constructors winning car SIX more times like lewis did! Max will own every record in F1.
Ferdi
10th April 2025, 7:17
I agree, a lot of people conveniently forget about the 8 years (actually it is 10 years if you count the two McLaren years as well) Lewis had race winning material (to put it mildly) available. I hope Max doesn’t get such a car six more times as it strongly dilutes the value of the achievements like in Lewis’ but also Vettels case. These two pop up in stats list relatively more than the level they were actually at.
paulgilb (@paulgilb)
8th April 2025, 20:21
Antonelli is the youngest driver to lead a lap, beating Verstappen’s record (Spain 2016) by 3 days.
First time since Monaco 2024 that the top 10 officially finished lap 1 in the same order and in the same positions that they started it. First time it has happened without a red flag since Monaco 2023.
First time since 2013 that there have been 3 different winners in the first 3 GPs of the season.
Same top 4 in the same order as Japan 2023.
First race (excluding Belgium 2021) on a non-street track where the top 6 on the grid finished in those positions in the race.
Piastri is the first driver to finish on the podium on his birthday since Barrichello in Monaco 2004.
Every driver who started ahead of their team-mate finished ahead of their team-mate.
5 of the 10 points-scorers were born in the UK.
Thanks to statsf1 and the official F1 site for some of these.