Double triumph: Bottas won the Japanese Grand Prix and helped Mercedes win the Design Cup

Free practices

The 17th stage of the world championship in car racing in the class of cars “Formula 1” became special already during the first day. Due to the impending typhoon, which promised to become the largest, if not in the last 60 years, then at least in 2019, the launch organizers decided to postpone the qualification to October 13. Thus, after two training sessions, the athletes actually received a rest day, and all the key events were to take place on Sunday.

Initially, the qualification should be planned for 10:00 local time (04:00 Moscow time), and the race - at 14:10, but subsequently the number of starts could well be reduced to one. Due to the imminent sunset, the start time of the main race was technically impossible to postpone.

Thus, if the weather again intervened and provoked a delay in the start of the qualification, then it would not have been possible to completely eliminate it. In this case, the starting grid could be formed according to the results of the second free practice.

At the same time, the Racing Point made fun of the organizers' ideas and proposed another criterion for determining the position of pilots at the start. In their opinion, they could become numbers on race cars. Thus, Daniel Riccardo (Renault), Lando Norris (McLaren) and Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) would be in the first three.

The decision of the stewards practically did not leave the pilots the right to make a mistake and forced them to show their maximum from the very beginning of the stage. Best of all, Mercedes representatives dealt with this. Valtteri Bottas for the first time with the British Grand Prix showed the best time in training, and his stablemate partner Lewis Hamilton lost only 0.076 seconds to him. Representatives of Ferrari Sebastian Vettel and Charles Lecler tried to compete with them, but the handicap turned out to be quite serious. So, the German lagged behind 0.989 seconds, and the Monegasque - 1.181 seconds.

In the second practice, the situation has not changed much. Bottas and Hamilton again took the first two lines, while the Briton was even slower than his partner, and Ferrari racers, although they narrowed their lag behind the leader, they let forward forward Max Verstappen. The fourth number of the general classification lost the Finn in less than 0.3 seconds and seriously increased their chances of a successful performance in the race.

Daniil Kvyat failed to please his fans. The first race turned out to be extremely unsuccessful for him, and his result was only 16th place. In the second, he performed slightly better and finished 12th, but lost to his main rival for Toro Rosso, Pierre Gasly.

At the same time, Toro Rosso explained that not the highest results of Quata in training sessions were the result of imperfect work of the car.

Holiday

Due to the lack of arrivals on the second day of the Grand Prix, Quat admitted that he intends to practice golf, and McLaren racer Carlos Sainz - to devote time to video games.

It is noteworthy that Quat was not limited to playing golf, and also took part in a fun quiz. Together with his teammate, they answered questions on the history of Formula 1. So, the riders had to learn the track by the sound of the engine, name as many partners as Kimi Raikkonen and say in what year Toro Rosso made its debut in the royal races. The Russian man with difficulty managed to take revenge for the failure in the training races, gaining two points more than the Frenchman - 11: 9.

At the same time, Romain Grosjean chose the most original way to pass the time. The Haas racer decided to glue the Tyrrell P34 Formula 1 six-wheeled model, popular in the mid-1970s. This car was presented in the royal races for two years, and such athletes as Jody Scheckter, Patrick Depaye and Ronnie Peterson sat behind the wheel. Initially, a Formula 1 journalist reported this, and already on Saturday the pilot himself posted a photo of the car on Instagram.

View this Instagram post

Posted by Romain Grosjean (@grosjeanromain) Oct 12, 2019 at 3:02 am PDT

Qualification

Despite the concerns of the organizers, on Sunday morning the weather was clear in Suzuka and the qualification of the Japanese Grand Prix did take place. However, even this did not save the athletes from accidents and, as a result, the appearance of red flags on the track. In the course of the first segment, two racers broke their cars at once, and the first of them was Robert Kubica, one of the main outsiders of the championship. The Pole lost control on the starting line and flew into the fence. It is noteworthy that after some time his example was followed by the Haas pilot Kevin Magnussen, who failed to keep the car in the same area.

The qualification for Kvyata was not given. He was able to break into the second segment, but could not advance further. According to the results of the race, he took only 14th place, again losing to his teammate, Gasley, who managed to get into the final round. So, the Frenchman showed the ninth result, being 0.727 seconds ahead of the Russian.

The most successful were the racers from Ferrari. Vettel showed the best time and won his second pole position this season. Previously, he managed to achieve similar success at the Canadian Grand Prix. Only 0.189 seconds his partner Lekler lost to him, and Bottas was on the third line.

Race

Like qualifications, the main race of the 17th stage of the Formula 1 World Cup began very briskly. Already in the course of the first round, several events took place that influenced the result of the race. So, Vettel became the main loser of the start, who almost made a false start and almost turned off the engine, as a result of which he allowed Bottas to escape into the lead.

Not without a collision, the participants of which were pilots Ferrari and Red Bull. Verstappen tried to pass Lecler and move to the third line, but instead crashed into a car vis-a-vis. As a result of this incident, the athletes rolled back to the end of the peloton, and Max subsequently was completely forced to refuse to continue the fight. So, the Dutchman lasted a little more than 15 laps, but still retired.

As for Leclair, he managed to replace the front wing and was even able to compete for high places. He took the sixth line and still got into the points zone. It is noteworthy that this result was for him one of the worst in the season. So, below he finished only in Germany and Monaco, where he became 17th and 20th, respectively. In the absence of Charles, the struggle for victory continued Bottas, Vettel and Hamilton. Moreover, the first two were forced to quickly drop into the pits, as a result of which they allowed the Briton to break out into the leaders. Probably Lewis would have stayed in first place, if not for the forced second pit stop in the end of the race. At this point, he was nine seconds ahead of Valtteri and confidently controlled the race.

As a result, Bottas took his chance and won his third victory of the season. For the last time, the Finn finished first in Baku, after which Hamilton was exclusively responsible for the first places in the German stable. Lewis himself to the end fought with Vettel for the second line, but in the end lost a little more than 0.5 seconds.

This success helped Bottas not only to break away from Leclair in the general classification, but also to help Mercedes win the Design Cup for the sixth time in a row. After the Japanese Grand Prix, the team had 611 points in the asset, which made it inaccessible to competitors. At the moment, their closest pursuer is Ferrari, which accounted for 435 points.

In addition, after this race, only Hamilton and Bottas had a chance of winning the season. The Briton has 338 points, while the Finn has 274 points. As for Kvyata, he was able to slightly improve his position and finished in 11th place. In many ways, the gatherings of Verstappen and George Russell helped, while at one moment the Russian was completely on the eighth line, but could not stay on it. But Gasley again made quite successful and earned precious points.

True, the organizers subsequently revised the results due to an erroneous signal to stop the race. In this regard, the final results were determined on the basis of 52, not 53 circles. Thanks to this, in the accident at the very end of the race Sergio Perez remained in ninth position, Lance Stroll dropped out of the top ten, and Nico, on the contrary, returned there. Quat fell to the 12th line.