‘In this car, you wouldn’t have seen me’

Max Verstappen joked that if he was driving McLaren’s Formula 1 car “then you would not have seen me” despite his dominant post and his victory at the Japanese Grand Prix.

The Red Bull driver won his fourth consecutive victory in Suzuka, pushing the two McLaren pilots in the Grand Prix on Sunday after obtaining a superb pole position on Saturday, which finished a remarkable turnaround after being on the pace on Friday.

“When I came here, I did not expect to win here at all – and after Friday, not at all,” Verstappen told Viaplay after the race.

“Starting on pole was the most important thing this weekend. McLaren, I think it was faster, but they couldn’t enter the DRS to take a step.”

Asked his reaction to victory and if the victory was completely due to the driver, Verstappen responded lightly: “I am very happy with what I do, I don’t even want to think about it if I had been in this other car (McLaren). So you wouldn’t have seen me.”

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images

Verstappen was then quick to call him a team effort with Red Bull having unlocked more pace of the RB21 car.

“In the end, it’s always a team that works well together, with GP (Gianpiero Lambiase) and this weekend, I also had another performance engineer, Hugh Bird,” he said. “I also worked with him until the end of 2020 and it went really well.

“In the end, we made the right choices before we qualify. If you listen to the onboards, it works very well between me and GP. These are things that are very important, however.”

Despite his first victory pierced in 2025, Verstappen also quickly tempered expectations before the next round in Bahreïn at only one point behind Lando Norris at the top of the pilots.

“It was an excellent result, but it was difficult to overcome and the qualifications were very important here,” he said.

“This does not mean that everything is suddenly Hosanna suddenly and that we are going to win all the races, but we can be very satisfied with this.”

Three factors that helped Red Bull

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo of: Mario Renzi – Formula 1 – Images Getty

Verstappen detailed three critical factors which helped the Red Bull in the Japanese GP: the difference between clean and dirty air, low tire wear on the new track surface and lower temperatures – a notable change since previous Red Bull cars would often make stronger compared to rivals in hot conditions.

“You could see that at the end of a passage, they were getting closer again and tried to attack, because my tires became a little too hot so,” he said.

“I think that helped us that it was a little colder today, so we had less overheating tires – it’s always a problem for us.

“Lots of fast corners and it makes it very difficult to follow – the tires become very hot when you get closer to someone.

“The cars also improve each year, with a lot of dirty air, so it becomes more and more difficult. When the times on the turn are quite close to each other without much degradation of the tires, then it becomes very difficult.”

Japanese GP photos – race