Mark Hughes: How Verstappen cracked the McLaren code in Japan

Max Verstappen and Red Bull cracked open the tricky code required to beat McLaren around Suzuka, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri closely trailing the tenacious champion throughout but never quite getting within range to change the outcome.

By the analysis of both McLaren and Red Bull, the former had the faster car around here. Yet Verstappen was ahead start-to-finish from pole. What were the pieces of the code required to beat what had thus-far been the season’s dominant car?

RB21 set-up

“We’ve had the car upside down,” said Christian Horner of the difficulty in finding the car’s sweet spot. Between understeer mid-corner, snapping to oversteer on the one hand to twitchy entry and mid-corner understeer on the other. This generation of car tends towards this anyway, but the Red Bull often takes a lot more sorting than the McLaren in converting simulator promise to track reality.

Roll bars, springs, weight distribution and wing levels were all changed, with the switch to a smaller wing from Saturday onwards endowing the car with McLaren-beating straight-line speed yet still respectable balance and grip. It’s particularly good under braking and Verstappen was maximising that trait to spectacular effect as he stole pole from under McLaren’s noses.

Low tyre deg

The newly-resurfaced first sector of the track – including the Esses – with its high bitumen content filling in the gaps in the surface texture greatly reduced the traditional Suzuka tyre degradation.

This is significant to the Red Bull code-break for a several reasons:

1. The McLaren is much more resistant to rear tyre degradation than the Red Bull. But that wasn’t a quality which was relevant, so low was the deg rate. “I would’ve preferred the old-style Suzuka as it would better reward the qualities of our car,” admitted Andrea Stella. A key Red Bull disadvantage was neutralised.
2. It meant an almost-universal one-stop race, so there was no strategic variation. So further rewarding the track position advantage Verstappen’s pole had bought him.
3. Because you need a lap time advantage of 1.4sec on the car ahead to be able to overtake around here, the lack of strategy variation meant there would be no overtaking. So once the poleman had converted that into the lead, there was no reason for the position to be under threat.

Quality of the qualifying laps

Norris struggled a little with the hairpin and the final chicane all weekend. It was a part-repeat of his China Saturday difficulties when loading up the front axle with his combined braking and cornering style. It’s an inherent compromise and another side of the coin which makes the McLaren overall the fastest car. It combines reasonable – but not great – rotation into slow corners with a stable balance through them.

That’s the very thing the Red Bull struggles to deliver. But when loaded up in the way Norris’ style demands it doesn’t respond well. Piastri’s simpler style – with less overlap between the braking and cornering phases – works better in these sorts of corners in this car.

That defined Norris’ potential as more limited around here than Piastri’s. But Piastri made a crucial error at Turn 2 on his final Q2 lap, losing him 0.6sec. Super-quick through the second and third sectors, he missed pole by hundredths – but that was good only for P3. Great though Verstappen’s lap was, Piastri had shown he was potentially faster. Without that error, pole was his for the taking. So therefore was the win. Norris’ lap didn’t have the glaring error and he was therefore P2. The race’s outcome was all decided on Saturday.

Strategy stalemate

Everyone realised this was going to be a one-stop race. But how comfortably so was only gradually revealed. The first dozen laps so Verstappen and the two McLarens ran at a pace to prevent their front-left mediums from graining. But they never even threatened to. Once this was realised and they were all let off the leash by their pitwalls, they then pulled away from the Charles Leclerc-led pack behind. But that low deg meant the following pack remained untypically tightly-bunched. Which had the effect of extending the length of the first stint, as it took many more laps than usual for a gap to appear for the leaders to drop into after they’d pitted.

George Russell triggered the stops from fifth place on lap 19. This put McLaren into a tricky spot. If it did not pit Piastri on the very next lap, he risked losing position to the Mercedes. And if that happened, with a 1.4sec advantage needed to overtake, he’d never get the place back. So he was brought in on lap 20. Meaning that lap was unavailable for Norris’ stop.

Red Bull responded by bringing Verstappen in on lap 21 – but it was a surprise to see Norris coming in with him. He’d been within apparent undercut range on lap 20. Except he’d have come out behind Ollie Bearman’s Haas if he’d pitted then (as indeed did Piastri). That would have prevented the undercut working. Going the extra lap to clear the Haas, Verstappen and Norris pitted together and although Norris tried to squeeze past at the pitlane exit, the gap was always going to have been closed by Verstappen by the time Norris arrived. A dusty moment on the grass was all that ensued.