Suzuka Circuit Tag

By FIA Mercedes Lewis Hamilton took his eighth pole position of the season at Suzuka and the 80th of his career, while title rival Sebastian Vettel faces a ninth-place race start after a troubled final segment of qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix. Valtteri Bottas will start alongside Hamilton in the second Mercedes, while Red Bull’s Max Verstappen with start at the front of row three, alongside the second Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen. Vettel established an early benchmark in Q1 with a lap of 1:29.049, more than half a second clearRead More

By FIA Lewis Hamilton made it a clean sweep in practice for the Japanese Grand Prix, taking top spot in FP3 at Suzuka, just over a tenth of a second ahead of Sebastian Vettel, in a session brought to an early end when Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg crashed out. Hulkenberg, sweeping through the Esses on a qualifying run, took much kerb on a track still damp from an earlier rain show and spun. He went into the barriers on the right-hand side of the track, causing substantial damage to the rearRead More

By FIA Lewis Hamilton beat title rival Sebastian Vettel by more than eight tenths of a second as he continued to light up the timesheets in practice for the Japanese Grand Prix. In the morning session Hamilton had run quickest, eclipsing Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas by just under half a second and in the second session the championship leader repeated the feat, taking top spot 0.461s clear of Bottas. Vettel had been almost a full second off the Briton’s pace in the opening session and though he was able to edgeRead More

By FIA Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes one-two in the opening practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix finishing half a second clear of team-mate Valtteri Bottas and almost seven tenths of a second ahead of the third-placed Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo. Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen and championship challenger Sebastian Vettel finished the session in fourth and fifth places, but both set their best times using the supersoft Pirelli compound, while Hamilton session-best time of 1:28.691s was delivered on soft tyres. Vettel ended the session just under a second offRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Victory in the Japanese Grand Prix wasn’t much of a contest for Lewis Hamilton after Sebastian Vettel retired his Ferrari with a spark plug issue, but it nevertheless served up an abundance of fascinating statistics. Chief of which is the incredible nature of Hamilton’s pole lap time and the time in which he finished the Grand Prix the next day. His lap record in qualifying on Saturday of 1:27.31 matches up exactly with the 1 hour 27 minutes and 31 seconds he took to finish theRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Renault and Toro Rosso have agreed that Carlos Sainz Jr. will move to the French team after the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend. This had been the original aim of the deal between Red Bull and Renault when it was agreed that Toro Rosso would loan Sainz to the French outfit. However, negotiations between Renault and Jolyon Palmer broke down and the British driver remained alongside Nico Hukenberg. The negotiations later resumed and Palmer has announced that tomorrow will be his last race with the team,Read More