Zoom Zoom- Race 3 in Japan! Red Bull Driver Drama! Odd Ferrari Fashion Merch, One driver's family jewels abused, and someone won this snoozer of a race.

Welcome back, Zoomies, we had a week off after the China GP, and a lot of stuff happened in that break. Before I dig into the big story, just wanted to mention a couple of notes. First one is personal: that due to circumstances beyond my control, I will NOT be attending this years British GP. I'm disappointed, but I just have to look at it as a delay, as eventually I WILL attend a F1 Grand Prix eventually! Moving on, the folks over at Puma/Ferrari actually signed off on this new merch, and lets just say it really caused quite the media storm due to its design, which is umm, rather suggestive of an explosion of excitement that might need a wipe down! Yes, I bought one (Collectors item!), and last I checked this cap has sold out! Below is a creative meme of Charles LeClerc wearing said hat:

Also, just an excuse to get a shot of Leo into the blog! Besides that merch pop-off, literally an hour after I posted the recap of the China GP, Red Bull Racing shook the all the paddocks with the news that after TWO races, Liam Lawson is being demoted back to the sister team of VCARB (RB), while RB's Yuki Tsunoda is being promoted to the cursed 2nd seat next to Max Verstappen, starting with the Japan GP! Why did this go down? Well, I've researched and gathered information to cobble together the background story, so here we go! On the racetrack, Liam has NOT been doing well with the Red Bull car once the Kiwi was promoted in the offseason. Crashes, poor finishes in just TWO races, and Red Bull Management decided to hold a meeting in Dubai, where we had "advisor" Darth Helmut Marko on one side wanting to bounce Liam back to being a reserve driver, and replacing him with Alpine's reserve driver Franco Colapinto (who will probably be in an Alpine seat if Jack Doohan doesn't perform well in the next few races). On the other side of the heated discussion was Team Principal Christian Horner, who advocated to promote Yuki into that second Red Bull seat, and demote Liam back to RB. Eventually, Horner won this battle, so for clarity, Liam is now back with RB, and Yuki gets the promotion to Red Bull that a lot of fans and pundits felt he should've had in the first place! The one sad thing is that this breaks up the Yuki/Isack Hadjar combo at RB- they have been driving well (except for that one formation lap Isack would like us all to forget!) and seem to actually enjoy each other's company and are actually kind of adorable off-track.

With this in mind, here is your NOT UPDATED driver grid:

Also, it's McLaren driver Oscar Piastri's birthday weekend! And this, with all that drama, is Yuki's home race in Susuka! Oh, and it's Charle's LeClerc's 150th F1 race!

Well, that pullover shirt didn't last long for Yuki! Onto the parent Red Bull team! Some teams have gotten "creative" with this Japan GP, both with the the liveries(paint job) and the driver uniforms getting a new look! My, and a lot of people's fave livery is the Haas car, blossoming in all its glory:

Then there is the Red Bull fashion switch with their racing uniform, which is seen here with Max modeling it:

I have images of sushi running thru my head!

P1: It's clear skies but very gusty and the the grass is dry with a temperature of around 57 degrees. And that's the extent of the action for P1! Lando topped the practice laps, so we move on to P2- but I had to slip in this Papaya Boys Japanese artwork.

P2: Well, these practices are 60 minutes, but P2 said to itself, "meh", as there were FOUR red flags in total, which led to over 36 minutes in the garage for the teams. So what happened? After about eight minutes in, Alpine's Jack Doohan's car bottomed out on Turn 1 due to the cross-winds pushing the car down closer to the ground, and him NOT turning off his DRS, and he does a nasty Black Swan pirouette before smashing hard into the barriers at 200MPH/ 4G's, basically wrecking the car (he is disoriented, but okay)! After that 25+ minute red flag (that barrier needed WORK to repair!), we restart practice again, with all cars queuing in the pit lane, giving themselves a 3-second spacing to avoid the turbulence of the car in front of you, so, it's taking time for cars to hit the track (the more you know!).

With 26 minutes to go, we have our second red flag, as Aston-Martin's Fernando Alonso beaches his car in the sand pit on Turn 9; he and the car are basically okay, but the tow crane is called out to haul the Aston back to the garage. 20 minutes to go, once again, into the breach, err, onto the track to learn something from this practice, and HELLO red flag, this time due to a fire on the grass at Turn 11 (there was a reason I mentioned the dry grass!), and once again into the garages the drivers go, as the track crew brings out the extinguishers to snuff out this hot spot, most likely caused by sparks flying off from the cars! With eight minutes left of practice for the teams/drivers, it's really just a matter of scrapping up some bits of data on this practice with the time left. Oh lookie, On Turn 8, with 20 seconds to go, ANOTHER grass fire breaks out, bringing out our 4th red flag, this fire moving quickly with the strong gusts, and race control says "EFF IT", this P2 is over! I would hope that there will be some major dampening of the grass areas before P3 the next day!

P3: 60 minutes, wind direction has switched, which should favor the drivers,temperature 55 degrees and clear. Eight minutes in, and we have our first red flag of this session due to a grass fire at Turn 11!! Was Smokey the Bear part of the budget cuts? Anyhoo, after about 10 minutes, that spark-induced fire has been snuffed out, and out the drivers go. No incidents until 5 minutes left, when it appears Sauber's rookie Bortatello's car went full arsonist, and sparked another little fire in the dry grass. Which ends this practice and gets us ready for Qualifying! Signs and portents of what's to come is that one driver was complaining of discomfort with his seat, and after P3 ended, that team literally switched out his seat (Seats are designed in a way that "fits" the body of the driver- for example, Yuki is short, so shorter car seat for him, Russell is tall, so a longer car seat for him, and then there are the seatbelt straps....but now I am getting ahead of the story! (We call that a tease in the media sphere!)

A note on how Qualifying works: There are three quick races to determine grid position for the GP race. First quali the last five drivers are cut, second quali again, last five drivers dropped, and 3rd and final quali determines the top ten on the grid and the ever important pole (1st) position. This also applies to the Sprint Qualis, you will just see me use SQ1 to show the difference.

Onto the First (and hopefully only) F1 SCROTUM SCARE OF 2025!

Q1: 18 minutes. The weather still the same, with wind gusts playing a role. While I will of course list the bottom five from these first two qualis, the news you really want to know about from my headline is what drivers family tree nearly got snipped off? Was this a Rupaul's Drag Race demo on how NOT to tuck? How do I describe the "Scrotum Squeeze" in a family friendly way? Graphics will be presented! (Behave! tech graphics!). This incident turned out to be both the most exciting and painful event of the weekend. After having his seat replaced, RB's Isack Hadjar painfully radioed in to team radio that "He couldn't pick up laps, as he could not focus", after about 11 minutes in. Telecast showing Isack in the garage getting "adjusted", and he looks in pain, but with about 4 minutes to go, Isack joins the others on track! More radio messages alluding to his discomfort in the car as he tries to make it into Q2. Isack barely makes it to Q2! Bottom 5 are Stroll, Doohan, Ocon, Bortatello, Hulkenberg and Lawson! I mentioned a graphic- this is the seatbelt contraption (that is built into the seat), that all drivers must have secured properly before hitting the track. Some of us know this looks like something that you would find at Mr. S Leather, (a NSFW website, btw!)! I have a couple of guesses on where the problem might have occurred that dang near neutered Isack from this graphic:

Q2: 16 minutes. All drivers on soft tyres, btw. RB has confirmed that it IS a seatbelt problem with Isack Hadjar, causing that discomfort with his family jewels, and have adjusted it accordingly! With 8;26 to go, we have yet another grass fire at turn 15, red flag time. Just a reminder, in Quali, unlike practice, the clock stops until this fire is extinguished. Fire out, drivers out to get in their best laps. Isack goes balls out thru the pain to make it into the Q3 top 10! Bottom five are: Tsunoda, Lawson, Alonso, Sainz, Gasly. Sainz may get a penalty for impeding Hamilton on the last lap beforetime expired.

Q3: 12 minutes. All drivers on soft tyres. No incidents, and out of nowhere, Max Verstappen puts in a Susuka quali time record of 1:26:983 to take pole position! So the grid for the GP will be: Max, Lando, Oscar, LeClerc, Russell, Antonelli, Hadjar (!!), Hamilton, Albon and Ollie Bearman in 10th! I'm pretty sure after this race ended, Isack had his testicles on ice (sounds like an ice skating show that got past Disney's censors!), or at the very least, some time in the sauna!

A well-deserved break for Isack and his junk at the spa!

Japanese Grand Prix! Or, as some of it have dubbed it, "A cure for insomnia!". Okay, we are going to do something different here, as this GP was so dull, it could've been sent via an email. After Isack's Scrotum Scare from quali, (he a soprano now!), that was basically the end of any excitement for the weekend at this GP! So besides race stuff, some sidebar observations: Susuka had some rain over night, so other than some puddles, it was about 55 degrees, light winds, and an overcast so gloomy, it cheered Debbie Downer up. With 53 laps and 18 turns, surely some action would occur, but much like the end of my prom night, there was no action, no incidents/crashes/stalls (other than when I paused the race for a potty break), and no DNF's- everyone finished with no car or scrotum damage, except for Aston's Lance Stroll, where I regret to report that the two hamsters that where powering his last place finish, gave up the ghost and are frolicking on the big hamster wheel in the sky, grateful they will never have to see Daddy Stroll ever again.

The race had a nice clean start, with Max in the lead, and the Papaya boys behind him, Alpine's Jack Doohan DID remember to turn off his DRS on Turn 1 and not crash, so progress, Jack, progress. After 15 minutes, this race was so dull that a few of us were looking for ANY kind of spark, alas, there were none, so no grass fires and very few overtakes. Carlos Sainz of Williams was hit with a grid penalty due to impeding Mercedes Lewis Hamilton in the last quali, and was dropped back three spots on the grid....no one noticed. There must've been a bee in William's Alex Albon's helmet, because he was very salty with his engineers on the radio today! Very unlike sweet Alex!

Around Laps 20-25, it was a rush down the pit lane to change tyres from mostly the mediums to the hards. The most exciting moment of the day was when both Max and Lando exited the pit lane, they nearly collided at the exit, with Lando shaving grass, hence the World's Most Expensive Lawnmower, and Lando actually lost a second behind Max. the one good and historical thing with all the leaders boxing to change their tyres, is that when all those tyre changes and re-entering the race track was done, Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli was in the lead; becoming the youngest driver in F1 history to lead an F1 race!

I did learn that the reason that the Red Bull teams livery/paint job and uni of umm...white and orange was to show the gratitude to their engine suppliers, Honda. This will be the last season Honda supplies Red Bull with their engines, as Red Bull will be going at it on their own from here on out. I learned something today! Let's just get to the results! Lando and Oscar kept it close, but it was Max winning, with Lando 1.3 seconds behind, and birthday boy (24!) Oscar taking the third spot on the podium. In a rare oddity, the first six drivers/cars that started the race, finished the race in the same order, with the top10 almost being the exact same. In the battle of the Red Bull driver swap, Yuki came in a disappointing 12th at his home race for Red Bull, while Liam showed little improvement being back in the RB seat, finishing 17th.

Fans voted Yuki Driver of the Day though! Oh, Max DID set a record of winning the Japan GP four times in a row, so there's that!

If Lando is on the podium, almost guaranteed he will pop his bottle of bubbly first and spray ya!

Notes: A rather dull race, but Max ran it beautifully, and the rookies are showing up this season, with Kimi, Isack and Ollie getting points for their teams early in the season!

Off to Bahrain next week! May everyone's week have a bounce in their step, and a properly secured seat belt in their own car, or Uber, or taxi......You get the point!