Max Verstappen cruises to Japanese GP win as Lewis Hamilton expresses Mercedes anger | F1 | Sport

The Dutchman held the lead well off the line before an opening lap red flag forced the three-time world champion to repeat the feat again at the restart.

While Verstappen’s afternoon was relatively straightforward from that point on, there was no further participation for Alex Albon and Daniel Ricciardo, who collided at Turn Three to bring out the red flag.

There were also frustrations for Zhou Guanyu, who was forced to retire in the garage on lap 14 after the Chinese racer was called in due to a gearbox problem. Sauber’s pit stop issues also hampered Valtteri Bottas, who would have been in contention to secure the team’s first points of the season.

Behind Verstappen, team-mate Sergio Perez secured a relatively comfortable P2 finish, while Carlos Sainz rounded off the podium ahead of his colleague Charles Leclerc, who ran an outstanding race from P9 on the one-stop strategy.

There was far less to celebrate in the Mercedes camp as Hamilton was left in no man’s land by an unconventional strategy decision, while George Russell finished slightly further up the road in P7.

The seven-time world champion vented his frustrations on the team radio, demanding: “Change my strategy!” and then again expressing his anger after losing time to Russell on his final stop.

Another team left frustrated were McLaren. The Woking-based outfit started the race from P3 and P6 on the grid but lacked the pace on Sunday with Lando Norris finishing in P5 and Oscar Piastri slipping to P8 on the final lap.

Fernando Alonso impressed for Aston Martin, seeing off the threat of Russell to hold onto P6, but his team-mate was left frustrated with Lance Stroll finishing on the fringes of the points.

Finishing within the points was Yuki Tsunoda. The home hero rounded out the top 10, giving the bumper home crowd something to cheer about.