SUZUKA, Japan — A familiar question was raised in the aftermath of Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix: Does Formula 1 have an overtaking problem?
As brilliant as Max Verstappen’s race-winning performance was, there was no sugar-coating the lack of passing moves up and down the field behind him. The race only featured 15 overtakes after the first lap — down from 48 at the same venue in 2024 and 29 in 2023 — and 11 of the 20 drivers finished the race in the same position they started it.
What’s more, the boredom wasn’t just felt by those watching on TV. Even on a track as fast and thrilling as Suzuka, several of the drivers found the 53 laps to be a tedious experience.
“Long, dull, not much happening,” was Nico Hulkenberg’s summary of the race after he started and finished 16th for Sauber. “I spent a lot of the race in traffic and it’s not much fun looking at someone’s rear wing in the DRS. It’s so difficult with these cars in the dirty air.”
Williams driver Carlos Sainz, who managed to pull off two passes towards the end of the race but still finished where he started in 15th, compared the lack of overtaking to Monaco — a venue that had so little passing in 2024, F1 felt the need to mandate two pit stops for this year’s race in an attempt to spice up the show.
“The midfield is so tight and around a track where you need to be 0.7 to 0.8 seconds quicker to pass it was impossible to expect a race where you could come back through the field,” he said. “This a track that has, in a way, become similar to Monaco in how difficult it is to pass.”
Even for rookie Gabriel Bortoleto, who was racing at the high-speed Suzuka circuit for the first time, the race became dull.
“It was not so difficult just a bit boring to stay behind [the car in front],” the Brazilian said. “Even if you have more pace, which was my case towards the end of the race, it was not enough to have that really big pace advantage.
“I tried two times [to overtake] but I wasn’t able to be side by side at the end of the straight. A shame but we move on.”
Why was it so difficult to overtake in Japan?
Following on from a Chinese Grand Prix that also had a distinct lack of wheel-to-wheel action, the dearth of overtaking in Japan has raised familiar concerns within the sport. F1 has long shown neurotic levels of concern about its “show,” and since 2009 has been making regular tweaks to the regulations to encourage overtaking and combat the issue of “dirty air.”
A car’s aerodynamic performance remains the biggest performance differentiator in F1, and every one of the aerodynamic surfaces is designed to maximise lap time with a clean and steady airflow in mind. Some consideration is given to making cars less sensitive to changes in wind direction, but it is incredibly difficult to simulate the turbulent air felt in the wake of another car and much more advantageous to develop a car for pure lap time in clean air.
The current rulebook, which put added emphasis on underfloor aerodynamics, was introduced in 2022 to improve overtaking opportunities and close the gaps in performance between cars. The idea was to make the aerodynamic surfaces of the car less sensitive to the dirty air pouring off the car in front, and by all accounts there was an improvement between the end of 2021 and the start of 2022.
But after four seasons of intense development, the aerodynamic sensitivity of the cars has only heightened and drivers are once again bumping into an invisible wall of dirty air when they close in on the car in front.
“It just seemed very tricky to get close,” Alpine driver Pierre Gasly said on Sunday evening. “As soon as you get within 0.6 or 0.7 seconds it was really tough to close down that last gap — it’s extremely difficult.
“Then you are not doing much [tyre] management, so when all the cars are very similar in performance it’s very difficult to make that pass. That’s what it is.”
The reduction of downforce felt in the wake of a rival car comes with the added negative of putting extra strain on the tyres. A few laps spent within a second of the car in front can overheat the tyres as they struggle to compensate for the lack of aerodynamic performance, making an overtaking move less likely. It is not uncommon to see a car close to within a second, struggle in the dirty air, and then fall back to cool its tyres before starting the process again.
It also means the driver leading the race holds a built-in advantage of enjoying clean airflow while those behind are at an inherent disadvantage managing their overheating tyres.
“Ultimately, we keep adding aerodynamic downforce [to the cars], which means that the losses are even bigger [behind a rival], so I think the dirty air is a problem,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said. “We have seen this even in China in terms of Hamilton, when he was in the lead of the sprint he could do pretty much whatever he wanted, even if the tyre had damaged. So the lead is a significant factor.
“Even if this generation of car was conceived to actually improve following, that was what we were talking about in 2022, there’s been so much aerodynamic development now that again they have become so much of an aerodynamic machine that as soon as you follow you lose the performance.”
But dirty air is by no means a new problem in F1, and the last 12 months of aerodynamic development does not account for the corresponding 68% drop in overtakes at Suzuka from the 2024 to 2025. A key factor in this particular year-to-year drop was the resurfacing of the track ahead of the 2025 event that resulted in a smoother asphalt and very little degradation in tyre performance as the race wore on.
It meant that the likes of Lando Norris, who had Verstappen’s Red Bull in sight throughout Sunday afternoon, never had the performance advantage required to pull off an overtaking move. One of the McLaren’s strengths this year is the way it treats its tyres, which on a different track surface may have given him an advantage over the Red Bull, but not at Suzuka.
“It was flat-out from start to finish but the pace was too similar to do anything,” Norris said. “Max drove a good race with no mistakes, and it ultimately came down to qualifying positions.”
Stella added: “Lando was trying to get close to Verstappen with maximum momentum, but it was difficult. It was something we knew right from the start that on this track you need 0.7 to 0.8 seconds of performance advantage in order to be able to overtake.
“Normally, this sort of lap time difference may be generated because there is degradation in the tyres, but with the new tarmac, Suzuka has changed the feature of being a high degradation circuit. It is now a very low degradation circuit. It was a very easy one-stop and not many strategic options.
“Normally the tyres add to the mix because there are some circuits in which you degrade almost 0.1 seconds per lap and then if you have a better degradation — if you degrade 50% less in 10 laps, for example — you are half a second faster, just because you degrade less for the tyres. This year this variable was not working because there was no tyre degradation.”
By pure coincidence, the track surface in Shanghai was also resurfaced ahead of this year’s race, contributing to a similar phenomenon just two weeks earlier at the second round of the season. Far from ideal, but as the sport’s most experienced driver, Fernando Alonso, pointed out, F1 drivers will always find a reason to complain.
“Maybe one stop was not maybe the fun race that we were hoping for, and in the past with multiple stops, maybe there’s a tyre difference,” he said. “But yeah, when we don’t have grip we complain that there is no grip, and when we have too many stops we complain the tyres don’t last, so instead of seeing the negative part of the weekend, I try to enjoy what we experienced this weekend, and it was another great Suzuka.”
What can be done to make races more exciting?
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Max Verstappen wins fourth consecutive Japanese GP
Take a look at the incredible numbers behind Verstappen’s fourth consecutive Japanese GP victory.
While dirty air issues have resurfaced towards the end of this regulation cycle, the 2022 rule change has succeeded in its goal of closing the performance gaps between teams. The gap between the fastest car in the first session of qualifying at Suzuka — Oscar Piastri’s McLaren — and the car in 16th — Hulkenberg — was less than a second on Saturday, underlining how tight the competition has become.
With such small margins across the field, it’s no surprise so little overtaking happens, especially when the performance advantage required to make a move at Suzuka was as big as 0.8 seconds. In that sense the 2025 edition of the Japanese Grand Prix, despite its lack of overtaking opportunities, was far closer than the 2024 race, which was also considered a dull affair due to the 20-second margin race winner Verstappen had over the next non-Red Bull driver in third place.
But if the overtaking problem persists over the season with the field as tight as it is, there’s a concern that this year’s championship will be decided by qualifying performances rather than wheel-to-wheel action in the races.
“For sure, qualifying is always crucial in the performance,” Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said on Sunday in Japan. “The smaller the gap is between cars, the more true that is … because you are in the group of cars.
“It’s not that you are just one fighting with the guy in front of you. Yes, it will probably be a ‘quali’ championship.”
The next round in Bahrain will be a fairer test of how big F1’s problem is. Sakhir’s track surface is one of the most abrasive on the calendar and the layout offers multiple overtaking opportunities per lap, providing more tyre degradation and more potential for action.
There will always be some races that have less action that others, and as Alonso points out, it’s worth appreciating each circuit for its unique qualities.
“This is Suzuka, I don’t remember a race even in the past that we see too many overtakings here without the weather changing,” he said. “It seems like we repeat always on Thursday [F1’s pre-race media day] how great Suzuka is, how great Monaco is, the glamour, the spectacular weekend, and then on Sunday we wake up and we say, Monaco is boring, what we can do to the track, Suzuka is boring.
“This is Formula 1. Suzuka is great, first because Saturday is incredibly high adrenaline, so it’s good that it is.”
