Red Bull was in turmoil of their own creation when they walked into the Japanese GP weekend. The team had a lot to answer for the driver switch between Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson. Moreover, their star driver Max Verstappen openly criticized them for the move as well as the poor performance of the car. Not an ideal situation by any means.
Nevertheless, things started to fit into place as the weekend progressed with the practice sessions. Lawson was getting more and more comfortable with the Racing Bulls car with each session, while Tsunoda trailed Verstappen by negligible margins.
The Dutchman himself, however, looked nowhere near challenging the McLaren drivers for the top spot on the lap timings chart. That was until the Q2 session of qualifying.
Enter Q3, and the reigning champion put together a blisteringly fast lap out of nowhere. While it came as a surprise, his McLaren rivals were still on their final hot lap. Most expected them to overtake Verstappen in the tally. As Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris crossed the finish line in vain, the surprise turned into shock.
Among those was RacingNews365’s Ian Parkes. The veteran F1 journalist was left in awe of the 27-year-old’s feat, which marked his first pole position of the season so far. “He [Verstappen] has delivered one of those all-time great qualifying laps in my books,” Parkes said on RN365’s podcast.
“I think it was one of the McLaren’s quickest in Q1, and I remember Lando [Norris] definitely being comfortably quickest in Q2. So, it looked like, for all intents and purposes, it was going to be a McLaren front row lockout to this particular Grand Prix. And then, wow. Max just delivers a lap of the gods,” he added.
Fernando: “Only he can do it. There is no other driver at the moment that can drive a car and put it so high, higher than the car deserves.”pic.twitter.com/afrBVSiM3j
— Verstappen News (@verstappenews) April 5, 2025
Parkes then recalled the epic chase from the McLaren duo, which ultimately fell short. He remembered Piastri’s final lap when the Australian managed to go purple for sectors two and three. However, the mistakes made in sector one lost him the pole position by just four-hundredths of a second.
Norris, meanwhile, managed to beat his teammate but again failed to better Verstappen’s time by just one-hundredth of a second. The Briton still holds a decent chance for a race win on Sunday, though.
With the forecast of rain and Verstappen running a low downforce setup, he might struggle with grip. Norris can look to exploit that weakness to get ahead and keep McLaren’s winning streak alive, with them having clinched a 1-2 in both Australia and China.
