Team Quotes - Sunday 6 April

Andrea Stella: "A double podium finish is a positive result for the team. We felt the victory was possible but yesterday, we missed out on Pole Position by a few milliseconds, and today the Qualifying order was the dominant factor for the final outcome of the Grand Prix. We will review to see if there were some variables we could have played with this afternoon, but degradation was low and a one-stop race didn't give us many strategic options.

"Overall, we have scored good points in both Championships and executed a very smooth weekend thanks to the trackside team, and everyone back at the factory. We're now looking forward to Bahrain."

Chrisitan Horner: "What a race! An imperious drive from the front secured a fourth consecutive win at Suzuka for Max, the Team and of course our engine partners Honda who we owe a debt of thanks and gratitude for their support over the years. In reality though the hard work was done yesterday. It has to be one of the best weekend's of Max's career, one that further underlines Max as the best in the world currently. Suzuka is a driver's circuit and boy did Max deliver. Equally, credit has to go to the engineering Team as well for turning things upside down after Friday and pushing together to get the job done. It was a solid performance for Yuki. The nature of the race meant overtaking was hard to come by throughout, but he made some ground and will only improve as he continues to settle into the Team the next few races."

Scuderia Ferrari HP leaves Suzuka with 18 points in the bag, its biggest race tally in this far from easy start to the season, courtesy of a fourth place finish from Charles Leclerc and a seventh from Lewis Hamilton, at what was a solitary race for both of them. The race was entirely in the dry, after rain stopped mid-morning and the team put its drivers on different strategies, which resulted in Leclerc finishing where he started and Hamilton making up one place.

Charles started on Medium tyres, Lewis on Hards and they both maintained position on the opening lap. On lap 6, Hamilton passed Isack Hadjar at turn 1 to go seventh. The leaders began pitting on lap 19, with Leclerc stopping for Hard tyres on lap 21, rejoining in tenth place. He was soon back up to fourth after the run of pit stops. Lewis stayed out until lap 30, running as high as second, behind Kimi Antonelli. He took on Medium tyres and was seventh again. Nothing much changed in the second half of the race, with Charles running at a reasonable pace, but he was losing a few tenths a lap to Max Verstappen in the Red Bull and the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, so he was unable to mount an attack for a podium finish. As for Lewis, he tussled with Antonelli for a few laps, but then, on his Mediums, began to struggle more than the Italian and had to settle for taking the flag in seventh place.

With two or three tenths of a second making the difference between fighting for the win or being down in the midfield in Formula 1 at the moment, the team will be working hard with the aim of getting more out of the car package. The SF-25 needs to be better balanced and tyre management also requires work. A chance to improve presents itself immediately as the World Championship moves on to Bahrain next week for round 4.

Fred Vasseur: Today's race result reflected what we saw in qualifying yesterday. With the car that we had we probably could not have done more. We were two to three tenths off the quickest in qualifying and it was pretty much the same today in the race.

We are struggling with some aspects and we must keep working to try and extract more from the car for Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We know there is room for improvement and we need to work on car balance and tyres management. For next week in Bahrain, we and in fact all the teams, will have some baseline data from pre-season testing, so we will be able to get a clearer picture of where we stand and of what we need to do to improve.

George Russell finished fifth and Kimi Antonelli sixth in Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix. In a race with limited overtaking opportunities, both drivers came home in the positions they had started the 53-lap Grand Prix.

Both drivers ran a one-stop race, starting on the Medium compound before switching to the Hard tyre for their second and final stint.

In the early stages, George put the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc under pressure but, at a circuit that is notoriously challenging to pass at, he was unable to find a way past. Running in the dirty air of Leclerc likely hurt George's tyres and the team opted therefore to attempt the undercut on lap 19.

Whilst it was close on pit exit as Leclerc stopped two laps later, he ultimately came out behind the Monegasque driver and held P5 to the flag. That is George's seventh consecutive top five finish and his best result at Suzuka.

Kimi meanwhile extended his first stint with impressive pace to become the youngest ever driver to lead an F1 race. He then protected against the undercut from the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton and pulled away to close on the battle between Leclerc and George by the end. In amongst that, he set a blistering 1:30.965 to become the youngest ever driver to claim a Grand Prix fastest lap.

The team now returns to Bahrain next week for the second race of this triple-header.

Bradley Lord, Team Representative: We come away from Japan with solid points but ultimately feeling that there was the potential for more this weekend. Suzuka is a difficult track to overtake at and today's race was a good example of that. George looked to have the pace on the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in the opening stages but didn't quite have enough speed to make a pass. Being in the dirty air likely hurt his tyres and he therefore couldn't deploy the necessary pace to make the undercut work before his stop. The positive is that, had we started further forward and where we believed our qualifying pace was, we likely could have competed for the podium.

Kimi meanwhile ticked off several more milestones today. He has built his confidence over the weekend at a demanding track and achieved a solid result. He also led his first laps in F1 and took his maiden fastest lap, becoming the youngest driver in history to achieve these feats. His development is encouraging to see and it's a third consecutive strong race performance from him.

We now head to Bahrain and will be aiming to be amongst the fight for the podium there. It is a very abrasive circuit and will be another good test of the progress we have made with the W16.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: Today's race was a case of what might have been for us as a team. We had shown promising pace all weekend, but Suzuka is a track that is heavily biased towards qualifying, rather than race pace. Failing to optimise our session yesterday therefore meant we knew we would be fighting an uphill battle to make significant progress today from P5 and P6. We had one eye on the weather this morning but ultimately it proved a dry Grand Prix, which limited opportunities.

The second limiting factor was the durability of the tyres, which made it a comfortable one-stop strategy for most. With George, having sat in the Ferrari's dirty air for a good portion of his first stint, we attempted the undercut. We were close to making it work but just fell short. That left him running in a frustrating fifth to the flag.

Kimi meanwhile ran longer on his opening stint and then showed good pace in clean air to extend. That helped him not only cover the undercut from Lewis (Hamilton) but create a tyre offset to those ahead. He used that to close onto the back of George by the end of the race and take fastest lap in the process. It was another mature performance from Kimi as he continues to build his experience.

Bahrain is a very different type of circuit to those that we have raced at so far this season. The abrasive tarmac makes it a real challenge for the tyres, and it will be a good yardstick of the progress we have made with our car since last year. Hopefully we can put in a solid performance and be back in the fight for the podium once again.

Andy Cowell, CEO & Team Principal: "Today's race had its challenges. We tried to seize available opportunities where we could, but in reality, there were very few. We gave our best effort with Fernando, our strategy was strong, but we ultimately finished in eleventh - just outside the points - which was the maximum we could achieve.

"Lance's starting position made it really difficult to progress through the field, especially at a track like Suzuka where overtaking is notoriously tough.

"The race has highlighted other areas we can improve; it's part of the learning and building process and we'll take these lessons forward as we head into Bahrain next weekend."

Pierre started from P11 on New Mediums, finished P13: Pit-Stop on Lap 24 for New Hards. Fastest Lap: 1min 31.820secs. Jack started from P19 on New Softs, finished P15: Pit-Stop on Lap 15 for New Hards. Fastest Lap: 1min 32.685secs.

Oliver Oakes, Team Principal: "It's not been the smoothest weekend for the team here in Japan. We found some good steps in performance compared to the first two rounds. Still, it is not enough for us to score points with Pierre finishing thirteenth and Jack fifteenth. Jack did a good job to climb a number of positions. We go to Bahrain knowing we had a good pre-season test there and aim to continue making steps forwards."

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team finished with Oliver Bearman 10th, and Esteban Ocon 18th, at the Japanese Grand Prix, held Sunday at the Suzuka International Circuit.

Bearman took the start on Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires from a career-best 10th place, having made Q3 during qualifying, and maintained his position through an orderly opening lap. Bearman managed his tires through the opening stint of the grand prix before coming into the pits on lap 23 for a set of Hard white tires, re-emerging in the thick of the midfield pack. Bearman cycled back through into 10th position, which he retained through to the checkered flag - earning back-to-back points finishes for MoneyGram Haas F1 Team.

Ocon started the race from 18th on the grid on hard tires and ran a longer first stint, pitting on lap 32 for medium tires, adopting the alternative strategy. Ocon was part of an intense four-way battle for position across the closing stages and ultimately came home 18th overall.

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team holds sixth position in the Constructors' Championship, on 15 points.

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: "It was a really good job from everyone to get Ollie finishing P10 with one point. It's only one point but that makes a world of difference and it's a big reward for everyone's effort. We knew this was going to be a huge challenge considering the issue we had in Melbourne, but the new parts we brought to Bahrain worked and the engineering team worked hard across the three days and found a good set-up to get the most out of the tires and qualifying. Today, execution of tire management was very good and communication was good. With Ollie, we maximized everything we could've today. With Esteban starting from P18, it was going to be difficult to overtake in a one-stop race, so we couldn't do much. It's about fine margins, so we need to get to the bottom of why we couldn't get Esteban to perform yesterday, and then look at today's race data to try to get both cars up there in Bahrain."

James Vowles, Team Principal: It's great to add another two points to our championship tally, with another strong and consistent performance from Alex. Near enough all cars finished in Qualifying order and my reflection on the weekend is we didn't get it all right with Carlos in traffic yesterday and that's on us as a team. In positive news Carlos' performance is in a strong place and I can't wait for next two races to see how we as a team perform and bring it all together. It's clearly an incredibly close championship battle around us and a few milliseconds is making all the difference, so we'll do everything we can to dig deep and find everything for the next few races.

Following on from his fourth consecutive Suzuka pole, Max Verstappen also made it four straight Japanese Grand Prix wins in a row. It was a triumphant weekend for the four-time world champion, who has been totally dominant on Saturday and again on Sunday at this track over all four years with the current generation of cars.

Today's was the Dutchman's 64th career win, Red Bull's eighth in Japan, the 123rd overall for the Christian Horner-led team.

McLaren could celebrate a double podium with Lando Norris second and Oscar Piastri third, with the English team's podium total in this race now up to 29.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli set two new records today when he took the chequered flag in sixth place. He knocked Max Verstappen off the top of the tables for the youngest driver to ever lead a Grand Prix and to set the race fastest lap.

15 drivers, all on the top eight rows, lined up on the starting grid having chosen the Medium for the opening stint. The only exception was Hamilton who opted for the Hard. On the back two rows, the places were split between Hard and Soft: Ocon and Bortoleto chose the C1, Stroll and Doohan the C3.

Almost the entire field made just the one stop, the quickest strategic option according to analysis of Friday's data. The Hard compound was the near universal choice for the second stint, although Sainz and Lawson ran the race without using the hardest tyres, going for a Medium-Soft strategy instead. Stroll was the only driver to run all three compounds.

The longest stint of all came courtesy of Doohan who ran a set of Hards for 38 laps, while Sainz and Lawson went all the way to lap 33 on the Medium before pitting.

Mario Isola: "When the top six on the grid take the chequered flag in the very same order, it's easy to characterise the race as boring. While I wouldn't go so far as to say we witnessed the most thrilling show in the sport's history, there was still some close racing. You only have to look at the top three, separated by just 44 thousandths in qualifying and then finishing within two seconds of each other in the race.

"After a fairly cautious first part, especially through the first sector, the most demanding from a tyre perspective, in the second part, all the drivers pushed all the way to the end. In fact, 14 of the 20 drivers set their fastest lap in the final five laps. It's worth noting that Antonelli's time of 1'30"965 was 2"741 quicker than last year's fastest race lap, set by Verstappen, which shows just how much the performance has improved compared to 2024.

"On a track where thermal degradation has traditionally played a major role, today we saw virtually no drop in lap time performance with the Hard and Medium compounds, even over long stints. That was down to the low ambient and track temperatures, actually the lowest recorded at Suzuka since 2011. The other contributory factor is the improvements brought to the 2025 tyre range, specifically aimed at reducing this type of wear. Another of our technical objectives was to limit graining and today, even with these low temperatures, we saw almost no signs of this issue across the field."