Rainbow Road
Antonelli makes history. Bearman's crash forces F1 to confront what comes next.
Welcome to the Weekend Brief: Japanese Grand Prix, the Any Given Monday newsletter that follows every grand prix, covering the racing, the business, and the politics that shaped the weekend.
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Headlines
Kimi Antonelli wins at Suzuka and becomes the youngest leader of a Formula 1 World Championship.
Ollie Bearman's crash overshadowed an otherwise exciting race.
Five-week break before Miami as FIA schedules meetings with teams, manufacturers, and drivers to review the 2026 regulations.
F1 celebrated the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. at Suzuka. The drivers, who have spent three races comparing the racing to Mario Kart, were not short of material.
Quote of the Weekend
“I finally see what you mean about the mushroom. It’s accurate.”
Oscar Piastri, in the cooldown room.
On Track
History at Suzuka
Kimi Antonelli won his second consecutive race and became the youngest driver to lead the F1 World Championship. At 19 years and 216 days, he breaks Lewis Hamilton's record and is the first Italian to top the standings since Giancarlo Fisichella after the 2005 Australian Grand Prix.
Antonelli started from his second consecutive pole but got too much wheelspin off the line and dropped to sixth before Turn 1. He recovered positions through the opening stint, running fourth and applying pressure to Leclerc ahead, when Bearman's crash on lap 22 brought out the safety car. Antonelli had not yet pitted; the leaders ahead of him had. He stopped under caution and emerged in front. From there, 29 laps of controlled, mature driving brought him 13.7 seconds clear of Piastri at the flag.
The safety car played a role. But Antonelli's second stint was the best of anyone on track, and his restart was flawless.
The Bearman crash
Antonneili's overshadowed by Ollie Bearman's crash, which exposed drivers' worst fears about the new regulations.
Bearman was approaching Spoon at 308km/h on lap 22 when he encountered Franco Colapinto at a closing speed of 45km/h. Both drivers were flat out.
The difference was electrical deployment: Bearman’s Haas was in deployment mode while the Alpine was not, and deployment is not something the drivers control. Bearman swerved, went sideways across the grass, and hit the barrier at 50G.
He walked away with bruised knees and no fractures.
The drivers had warned this was coming. Carlos Sainz, speaking as a GPDA director, said the union had sent a specific warning to the FIA about closing-speed incidents under the new energy management rules. The FIA issued a post-race statement, unusual for a set of regulations three races old. Meetings are now scheduled in April between the FIA, teams, manufacturers, drivers, and FOM.
Suzuka showed both sides of the debate for the new regulations. The deployment cycles create overtaking, and the racing has been entertaining. But the same system produces large speed differentials between cars on the same stretch of road, and the drivers cannot predict or control when those gaps appear.
Three races in, the sport has its first serious safety incident under the new regulations. The debate is now when and what to change, rather than whether to change. The next big gap gives them time to figure out a solution.
McLaren arrives
Piastri had not completed a single racing lap in 2026 before Sunday and made up for lost time. A brilliant start from third carried him into the lead before Turn 1, and he controlled the opening stint with composure, managing pace and tyre wear while pulling a gap over the chasing Ferraris.
The safety car changed the picture. Piastri had already pitted and was running in a strong position; Antonelli had not, and the free stop under caution handed the Mercedes driver the lead. Whether Piastri would have won without the interruption is unknowable; plenty can change over a remaining stint, but his pace and racecraft across the full afternoon were the standout performance of the day.
Second place and a first podium of the campaign is the result McLaren needed. Norris took fifth. Whether Suzuka is a turning point or an outlier depends on what they bring to Miami, where a significant upgrade package is expected.
Red Bull’s midfield reality
The RB22 came to Suzuka with upgrades, revised sidepods, a new floor, and an updated engine cover, but it did not work. Verstappen qualified 11th after being eliminated in Q2 and spent the race stuck behind Pierre Gasly's car. At one point, he waved sarcastically at Gasly when the energy deployment left him powerless to overtake.
The car is carrying an estimated 9–10kg over the 768kg minimum weight. A weight-reduction programme is planned for Miami, but the correlation between simulation and track performance remains poor. Red Bull is a midfield team until it solves the car’s frontal instability.
The struggles have rekindled Max Verstappen's doubts about staying in F1, and he seemed more downbeat than usual on Sunday about his passion for the sport.
The rest of the field
Gasly was a deserved seventh, another quietly consistent weekend for Alpine’s driver. Lawson took ninth for Racing Bulls, Ocon scored his first point for Haas in tenth, some consolation on a dark day for the team.
Williams used the afternoon as a data-collection exercise. Albon made six pit stops across 53 laps, cycling through compounds and gathering tyre information. Sainz brought the other car home 15th.
Aston Martin celebrated Fernando Alonso's finish. That sentence reads like satire, but it reflects where the team is. Neither car had completed a full race distance before Sunday, so getting one car home at Honda’s circuit counts as progress. Stroll retired on lap 36 with a suspected water pressure issue. The Honda power unit’s problems have eased, but the performance gap to the midfield, let alone the front, is enormous.
Off Track
Mercedes x Yamamoto
Mercedes ran a wolf motif on the W17’s front wing, the result of a collaboration with Y-3, the Adidas sub-label led by 82-year-old Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto.
The wolf graphic revives artwork from Adidas’s F50 Tunit “Beast Pack” football boots from the 2006 World Cup and is anchored in Japanese mythology, where the wolf represents speed, instinct, and protection. The SS26 capsule collection was first teased on the Paris Fashion Week runway in June 2025.
Toto Wolff fronted the campaign alongside Russell and Antonelli. The team principal in a fashion shoot is not standard practice in F1. But, it tells you where Mercedes sees its brand: not just motorsport performance, but lifestyle positioning at the intersection of luxury sportswear and racing.
Special liveries
Haas ran a Godzilla-themed livery through their season-long deal with Toho Co., the Japanese studio behind the franchise. The design integrates the monster into the team’s white, black, and red colour scheme to coincide with the upcoming release of Godzilla Minus Zero this autumn.
Racing Bulls went with a cherry blossom and calligraphy-inspired design by Bisen Aoyagi, revealed at the Red Bull Tokyo Drift event: white, red, and silver, shaped by the Red Bull Spring Edition can and Japanese cultural aesthetics.
It was a joke, right?
The Japanese Grand Prix marked the 40th anniversary of the Super Mario Bros. brand. Nintendo and the cast of the upcoming Mario movie were present at Suzuka.
F1 has spent three races hearing from its drivers that the 2026 energy deployment feels like Mario Kart. Leclerc made the comparison first in Melbourne: the mushroom power-up, the sudden burst of speed, the helpless cars running without boost.
Having the actual Mario Kart brand at the circuit while the drivers protested the racing felt like Mario Kart was either a spectacular lack of self-awareness or a masterclass in leaning into the narrative.
Knowing F1, probably the former.
The April reset
The cancelled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian rounds mean the season pauses until the Miami Grand Prix sprint weekend on 1st–3rd May. Five weeks of factory time and time for the FIA, manufacturers and F1 to figure out how to tweak these new regs to satisfy drivers and fans.
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Alpine being P5 in the constructors standings (best position they have been in almost 3 years) is great! I feel like nobody is talking about it