Japanese Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton to visit Mercedes designers

McLaren posed the closest thing to a challenge to Verstappen in qualifying, but Lando Norris and Australian Oscar Piastri – highly impressive in beating his team-mate on his first visit to Suzuka in his maiden F1 season – were more than half a second adrift.

They were asked after qualifying if they had any hope of challenging Verstappen in the race.

Norris joked: “If you want to emulate [Ayrton] Senna into Turn One, Oscar, you can do that happily.”

It was a reference to the famous 1990 race, when Senna – to many minds – deliberately crashed his McLaren into Alain Prost’s Ferrari to settle the result of their championship fight, after the Brazilian had been upset by the refusal of then motorsport boss Jean-Marie Balestre to move pole on to the racing line.

Norris added: “We are going to try but if he’s leading by Turn Two, there’s not a lot you can really do.”

In reality, Verstappen has been so superior this weekend that he will surely find a way by even if he is beaten into the first corner, as he was by Norris at the British Grand Prix and Piastri in the sprint race in Belgium.

The fight will likely be behind him, with Perez trying to move forward, and Mercedes looking to use what is normally better tyre wear to try to threaten Ferrari and McLaren in front of them.

Tyre wear has been high and at least two stops are expected for most drivers.

Piastri said: “Just looking at the tyre choices from everybody, clearly I would say most people are expecting more than one pit stop.

“And whenever you’ve got more deg, more pit stops, it just increases the margin for error. It tests how well you can manage the tyres as well, so it’s not as simple as just going flat out or as quick as the car will let you.”

Norris said: “Mercedes are always very strong on a Sunday. We’re hoping for probably an easy race but it’s never going to be an easy race around here so, like Oscar said, just with undercut powers and things like that, I’m sure there’s going be a lot going on.”