2025 Japanese GP Betting Preview

It was another tough weekend in China, hopefully things go better at Suzuka. Now, it is time for James Punt’s 2025 Japanese GP Betting preview.

2025 Japanese GP

Things have not gone to plan so far betting wise. Two Grand Prix, 14 bets, 12 losers and -10.45 points balance. Time to get things heading in the right direction.

The F1 circus moves on to Japan and one of the best tracks on the calendar, the mighty Suzuka. This is Honda’s home race and the track was originally built as their test track. As such, it features the full range of corners and straights, made to test the qualities of a car’s performance.

As a result it is what can be described as a ‘car track’. It rewards the best cars and it is good for establishing a much firmer pecking order to what we have had in Australia or China. It is not unusual to see Noah’s Ark grids, with teammates lining up side by side according to the car’s performance.

Best Car Usually Wins

When the big regulation changes came in 2014, we had six consecutive wins for Mercedes, and three 1-2 finishes in those six years. There was no race here in 2020 and 2021, but when we returned in 2023, we were into the ground effect regulations.

Red Bull had the best ground effect car and we have had three consecutive wins for Max Verstappen and two 1-2 finishes for Red Bull. McLaren did not have their definitive 2024 car ready for this race last year.

That is nine years with just two different manufacturers winning. As I say, it is a car track and that means that McLaren should have a 1-2 this weekend. In what order is the only question.

In what order the other teams will line up is more difficult to predict, but we will know a lot more about the teams’ relative performances at the end of this weekend.

The 2025 Japanese GP Track

It has got the lot and the drivers love it. Well, those that are in a decent car will love it. A poor car will get found out here.

With Japan being an overcrowded island, land is very valuable and this track is built into a very small parcel of land. That is the reason it Formula 1’s only circuit of eight layout. One impact of there not being a lot of room, is that there is not a lot of run off area.

If a car crashes or breaks down, it is likely to be in a unsafe place and needs removing, so we get more yellow flags and safety cars as a result. There is a 67% chance of a safety car and 50% for a virtual safety car.

Typical Test Track

The track features slow corners, medium speed corners, fast corners, long duration corners, short duration corners and two straights. A typical test track. There is only one DRS zone, down the start – finish straight. Overtaking is possible, but tricky.

Of the nine races here since the Turbo Hybrid era started in 2014, the pole position driver has won the race seven times, the other two were won from 2nd and 3rd.

The attrition rate is very unpredictable, but higher in the wet, and rain is often a feature of the GP weekends here. We have had two years with all the cars classified finishers, two years with only one DNF, one with two DNFs, two with three DNFs and two races saw five DNFs.

Tough On Tyres

This track is one of the hardest on the tyres. The tarmac is abrasive and the high speed corners and changes of direction put the rubber to the test. Pirelli will be bringing their three hardest compounds. Pirelli have pointed out that a large part of the track has been resurfaced, from the exit of the last chicane to the end of the first sector.

This is an important section, as it features medium and high-speed corners, some of them long ones, such as the first two after the start-finish straight, where tyres come under a lot of stress. That means there is a bit of an unknown factor and the teams will want to gather as much data as possible in free practice. Pirelli’s simulations suggest that the lap times will fall as a result, by as much as 1.5 seconds.

A two-stop strategy was popular last year but there are options. Leclerc did a one stop strategy last year (medium – hard) and was able to make up places. The hard tyre will be the best race tyre and the medium likely to be the other choice. The soft is not really a viable race tyre.

It is more of a rear limited track than China.

2025 Japanese GP: The Weather Forecast

It looks like we will have some nice boring weather for much of the weekend. Friday will be partly cloudy and 15 degrees with light winds. Saturday is forecast to be cloudy, 16 degrees with a 10% chance of rain. Sunday will see more sun, with temperatures of 19 degrees and light breeze.

Some forecasts are saying Sunday may see a moderate chance of showers, around 25% (I have seen 80% mentioned), but the threat is set to recede in the afternoon. The race will start at 14.00 local time and most forecasts have the chance of rain in the afternoon much lower than for the morning, as low as 1%.

Teams and Drivers

McLaren 

Have won both GPs so far, got both pole positions and both fastest laps. Norris won in Australia, Piastri in China. It was a messy start to the China GP for Norris. He only managed sixth place in sprint qualifying and after making a mistake on the opening lap, he ended up a disappointing eighth, getting just one point. Piastri qualified third and finished second.

For GP qualifying, Piastri was on pole, Norris third, and they converted it into a 1-2 finish. We were denied any chance of Norris making a race of things when he developed brake problems which nearly cost him second place.

Qualifying Key For Norris

Norris will need to be more clinical in qualifying. The McLaren has very good race pace, but qualifying is not their strong point. “Our car is still not easy to drive on fresh tyres,” says team principle Andrea Stella. It is stronger on long runs, but, as with most of these ground effect cars, it can struggle in the dirty air of the car in front.

This is the cars Achillies’ Heel. Not so great in qualifying and can struggle when following other cars. They lost out to Hamilton’s Ferrari in the sprint race, unable to get pole and not having enough laps, nor a pit stop, in order to make their race pace pay. Sprint race weekends will be more difficult for them, but on regular race weekends like this, they should be able to overcome any minor woes in qualifying.

Best Car

McLaren have the best car, but if they are slow to heat up the tyres, qualifying may be a weakness, but the lower degradation will pay dividends over a race distance, especially on a high degradation track like this.

The relatively cool temperatures forecast for qualifying this weekend may open the door for another team to get pole, but slightly warmer conditions for the race will move things back towards McLaren on Sunday.

McLaren finished second and third here in 2023. Norris has finished ahead of Piastri in the last two years at Suzuka. You have to go all the way back to 2011 to find the last time a McLaren won here. Jenson Button’s victory was the last time either Red Bull or Mercedes didn’t win the Japanese GP. It’s a car track.

Mercedes 

Back to back podium finishes for George Russell and able support from Antonelli, means that Mercedes are second in the Constructors’ Championship, twenty one points behind McLaren. They have been good in qualifying, solid in the races, but not really challenging McLaren.

Russell says the car is an improvement on last year, but it is not as good as they had hoped for. It has no obvious vices and is easier to drive than most, but just not the fastest.

Russell has finished eighth, seventh and seventh in his three previous races with Mercedes here. It would be a disappointment if he didn’t improve on that this weekend.

It must be said that while Mercedes dominated here in the turbo hybrid era, they have struggled with the ground effect regulations. Two fifth places for Hamilton were as good as it has got for them in the last three years. This will be another new track for Antonelli to learn but at least he has a benign car in which to do so.

Red Bull 

Will be sporting a new one off livery and new driver for this weekend. Which one will last longer? Liam Lawson has been sent back to Racing Bulls after two very poor weekends. In his place comes Yuki Tsunoda, who had been overlooked as the replacement for Perez.

It is all a bit of a mess, but it seems that the car has been built solely to suit Max Verstappen. That means finding anyone else that is even comfortable with its characteristics is proving very difficult.

Lawson was a strange choice. He didn’t even have a full season of F1 under his belt and he was thrown in at the deep end. Tsunoda is a more experienced driver but he is not an outstanding driver.

Red Bull require a driver that pick up points race in race out. They are not there to compete with Verstappen, which is not the mentality for most drivers. Perez was very good in the role until his struggles in 2024. However, was that a problem with Perez, or a problem with the car?

Harder To Drive

Verstappen won the Drivers’ Championship last year, but had McLaren started the season with a car that was fully up to speed, would that have been the case? This year’s car is harder to drive and is not the best car. In 2023, Red Bull had one of the best F1 cars ever. In 2025 they are struggling. The team have lost a lot of key personnel and their understanding of their car seems to be lacking.

Verstappen is making positive noises about this weekend. He feels that the track will be a lot better suited to the car and he comes here having won the last three Japanese GPs. Tsunoda knows this track better than any other on the calendar but apart from some time on the simulator, this car is new to him, and a handful to drive.

Japanese drivers have scored three F1 podiums in the past, two of them here in Japan. Verstappen has only failed to finish on the podium once in the last seven years here. I would not be surprised to see Verstappen on the podium again at the 2025 Japanese GP, but as for Tsunoda? If he betters his tenth place here last year that will be considered a success.

Williams 

Fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship is a little flattering. Albon has scored sixteen of their seventeen points and is doing a good job. Carlos Sainz is struggling. The ex-Ferrari man was looking good in testing but he has been put in the shade by Albon in the first two races.

This has not been a great track for Sainz and his third place for Ferrari last year was a career best in Japan. Albon must hate the sight of the place as he has suffered three consecutive DNF’s. The car has potential but it is still sensitive to wind and it may be a bit breezy on Sunday at the 2025 Japanese GP.

Ferrari 

Heroes to zeros in a twenty four hour period in China. Hamilton dominated the sprint part of the weekend but come Sunday, the team decided to change their set up for the race. The result was a slower car and ultimately, he was disqualified for an excessively worn skid block.

He had finished a disappointing sixth, losing out to Leclerc in a Ferrari with a damaged front wing after the two teammates made contact on lap 1. Leclerc was also disqualified, but his crime was to be underweight.

Leclerc lost a front wing endplate at the first corner but was still faster than Hamilton in the race. Whatever changes were made to Hamilton’s car, they made it slower, and ultimately illegal. Leclerc’s car was weighed with a new front wing, so it was a simple case of the car being under weight.

Strategic Blunder

No safety car in the race meant higher fuel race, but that is not exactly unheard of. The team failed to get him to do enough fuel saving, so it was a strategic blunder.

The team threw away eighteen points and it was very reminiscent of the bad old days at Ferrari.

Hamilton loves the track and has won four Japanese GPs at Suzuka in the dominant Mercedes. He did lose to Bottas and Rosberg, so there was a lot of the car doing the heavy lifting. His last win was back in 2018.

Charles Leclerc’s best result here was a third place in 2022, and he has finished fourth for the last two years. Ferrari last won here in 2004 with Michael Schumacher at the wheel.

Haas 

We are only two races into the season and Haas are already a real head scratcher. Dreadful in Melbourne but ended up with a double points finish on Sunday. Yes, they were helped by the disqualification of both Ferraris but it was still a double points finish on merit, just boosted post-race.

Team boss Komatsu is not getting carried away, however. The car is not great in high speed corners, with inconsistent downforce. The bumps of Albert Park didn’t help either.

At the Chinese GP, with its smooth, newly resurfaced track, and relative lack of high speed corners, the car looked decent, but the underlying weakness was still there. It was hidden by the nature of the track.

Suzuka A Tougher Test

Suzuka will be a tougher test. Some of the track has been resurfaced but overall, it is unlikely to be as smooth as Shanghai, and the fast corners here are properly fast.

The team will have some new parts to try and fix the problem, but will it be a total fix, or just a step in the right direction?

Esteban Ocon has had four top ten finishes here from his six starts, while Bearman makes his Suzuka debut. Haas have not scored here under the ground effect regulations. I expect a tougher weekend for Haas.

Aston Martin 

Lance Stroll is on ten points and Alonso is on zero. A crash in Melbourne ended Alonso’s race there, and a brake seizure in China did for him in Shanghai. Alonso has, just, outqualified Stroll in both race weekends, but the general consensus is that Stroll is closer to Alonso than he has been for the last two years.

As for the car, it is in that very crowded midfield. They are better than Sauber and Haas (for now), but slower than Racing Bull and Williams. Alpine are harder to place in the nascent pecking order.

Sauber 

After cashing in at the Australian GP, Sauber looked more like their old selves again. Hulkenberg qualified twelfth for the GP, but made a mistake on lap one, damaged his floor and ended up finishing eighteenth, one place behind teammate, Bortoleto. They have a better car than in 2024, but they might be dining out on that seventh place in Melbourne for a long time.

Racing Bulls 

Had qualified well in China but a bad strategy ruined their race and they only finished fourteenth and nineteenth. Tsunoda picked up three points in the sprint race in China. They have shown good qualifying pace but not been able to capitalise on that.

Tsunoda has moved over to Red Bull and he is replaced by the demoted Liam Lawson. It is Lawson who may have got the better deal. The Racing Bull is said to be an easier car to drive and just that fact alone may inspire Lawson to get stuck in and prove a point.

He has had one F1 race here, finishing eleventh for the then named Alpha Tauri in 2023. Lawson also raced here when he was a Japanese Super Formula driver, so he knows this track quite well.

The team managed a point here with Tsunoda last year, and they were eleventh and twelfth in 2023. The potential is there for minor points. They need to take their chances better than they have so far.

Alpine 

Gasly has back to back eleventh places in 2025, but he was disqualified post-race in China for his car being underweight. They were one of the teams to have to change their rear wing in China to comply with the new deflection tests.

Gasly is driving well enough but they were pretty underwhelming in China. Jack Doohan has been invisible so far. He did OK in Australia, before binning it in the wet. He was very easy to miss in China and will be even easier to miss this weekend, as he will have to sit out FP1 to make way for Alpine’s Japanese reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa.

Alpine need to get a grip. Testing was promising but the season has not started well. Gasly has had a couple of points finishes here and is not without a chance, but that rear wing change did rock their boat in China. The car has shown better race pace than qualifying pace, so any potential bets on them may be better considered on Sunday.

2025 Japanese GP: Summary

This is a car track, A good driver in a bad car is going to struggle more than a poor driver in a good car. We will have a much better idea of who is going to go well/badly on Sunday, after we have had seen at least the first two practice sessions. This not a race to go in early with some speculative bets. Better to be patient, even if that may mean lower odds.

There is the chance that we may see some car upgrades this weekend. I doubt there will be any major ones but again, we will know more after practice.

The Team To Beat

It is hard to argue that McLaren are not the team to beat this weekend. Yes, they had a sub-optimal weekend in China but still came away with a 1-2 in the GP. China was a sprint race weekend. They are always more likely to throw up unusual results in the sprint race as there is just a one hour session to gather data and set the car up for sprint qualifying and the sprint race. The ‘proper’ qualifying and race was more representative of form than Hamilton’s win in the sprint.

The Shanghai circuit had also been completely resurfaced which threw everyone in terms of race strategy. The hard tyre turned out to be good enough to make a one-stop race work. Those teams that stopped early to run a two-stop race got punished. That wouldn’t have happened in a normal race weekend. And then there is the fact that the Shanghai circuit is an unusually front limited circuit.

Before that we had a wet Australian GP, with a high attrition rate and three safety car deployments to mix things up. It was another atypical race.

Dominant

We have two pretty poor races in terms of a form guide. The only thing they had in common was that McLaren dominated both. But for that beached on the grass moment for Piastri in Australia, we would have had two races with McLaren finishing 1-2, with both pole positions and both fastest laps.

Had the Australian race been dry, it would have been a case of just how far ahead McLaren would have been. In the dry middle part of the race, they dropped the field with ease.

We have learned that the McLaren is a better race car than qualifier, and it’s a pretty good qualifier. This weekend will see a fairly cool track for Saturday’s qualifying and that may tighten things up at the front of the grid, but over a race distance, the McLarens have to be fancied, with the proviso that none of these current generation of cars are happy in dirty air.

McLaren’s advantage would be blunted by having to follow cars in traffic, as Norris was in the Sprint in China. Blunted, but not wiped out.

We will be a lot wiser after this race, especially if we do not see any rain on Sunday. That may be the best result we get from this weekend.

Having had seven bets ahead of any track action in the first two race weekends, and all seven losing, I am reluctant to play at this stage. The fact that our only two winning bets came from the RaceDay Update is a hint that being patient is a better path to profit.

Ante-Post Markets

I will have a look at the ante post markets, just to see if there is anything worth taking a big risk on.

First up is that Lando Norris is the 2.50 favourite, and Piastri 3.00. A touch generous but we may get better on Sunday, if McLarens relatively less competitive qualifying pace comes to the fore in cool conditions. McLaren are 1.40 to be the winning Constructor, but the above reasoning applies.

The podium finish market has George Russell available at 3.75. He has done just that in the first two races. Russell needed Piastri to have his off in Melbourne to do so, but he did so on merit in China. Verstappen would appear to be his biggest threat and the Dutchman is 2.10 to finish on the podium.

If we get a McLaren 1-2, there will only be one place up for grabs and on this track, with the ground effect regulations, Red Bull has been a lot stronger than Mercedes. That said, Verstappen’s odds make little appeal.

Top Six

To finish in the top six is getting into the zone where maybe one of the midfield teams can crash the party, But the ‘big four’ should be able to fill the top six places. Antonelli at 2.50 is marginal value as is Albon @ 5.50.

There are many candidates for a points finish and none strike as of any great value at this point.

There is one bet that I am happy enough to have a go with before we have any on track action.

The F1 news for the last week or so has been dominated by the Red Bull/Racing Bulls reshuffle. Liam Lawson got the boot after just two races. Why he got the boot, outside of being miles off Verstappen, and indeed just about everyone on the grid, is open to speculation, and there has been plenty of that.

Engineers’ Influence

Christian Horner has now said that it was lobbying from his engineers that swung it. But why did his engineers want Lawson out? Where they worried about the potential for an accident, worried about his mental health, or just that they could not stand working with him? I have read about all three.

Nobody is saying that Lawson is massively incompetent. Red Bull gave him the job after all. Most people say that he just couldn’t drive the Red Bull. He didn’t have the skills to do what Verstappen can do with the car, but who does? Sergio Perez was in the Red Bull for years, but in 2024, he was terrible, bad enough to get handsomely paid off.

Now Red Bull are turning to Tsunoda, a driver they previously rejected for Lawson. Has Tsunoda suddenly become a driver that can get a decent tune out of the Red Bull? That doesn’t make sense. Are they having to turn to Tsunoda because they have no other option? That seems to be the case.

For Lawson, he returns to a team for which he has already driven for, although not in this year’s car. He did alright, nothing brilliant but good enough for Red Bull to give him a job in the senior team.

Best Of The Rest

The Racing Bull is a decent car, arguably best of the rest so far in 2025. These ground effect cars are tricky to drive but the Racing Bulls and Mercedes look to be the ‘easiest’ of this year’s crop. Not necessarily the quickest, but just a bit more predictable to drive.

Tsunoda is going to a team that he has tested for but not driven for. He wasn’t deemed good enough. He doesn’t have any relationships within Red Bull, which is regarded as a very harsh environment. Be fast or get out kind of thing.

The car is a real handful to drive and the number two driver is just that. Nobody has really ever given Max anything to worry about. It is Max’s team and he is not going to put a protective arm around Tsunoda.

Frosty Start

Tsunoda has already said that he will not ask Verstappen for any hints as how to get the most out of the car, because he would expect Max to not tell the truth. That’s a great start.

Who will end up with the best finishing position come Sunday afternoon? It is not as simple as saying that the Red Bull is the faster car, so it will be Tsunoda. Lawson is in a slower, but easier to drive Racing Bull, and in a team he knows. Tsunoda is in a potentially faster car, but one that is much harder to drive, and he is also in a team that he doesn’t really know.

Both drivers know the track well so it is all square in that department. It is a hard H2H to price up, but I have it a lot closer than this particular bookie.

2025 Japanese GP Tip: 1 point Liam Lawson to beat Yuki Tsunoda @ 3.25 with Livescorebet

The same firm have Hulkenberg at 2.15 to beat Esteban Ocon. I expect the Haas to have a much tougher weekend than was the case in China, but the Sauber is not exactly flying and the value is marginal.

I will leave it at that for now. This 2025 Japanese GP weekend is all about learning, being patient and trying to get some profit on the board. There will be an update for qualifying, but as the time difference means FP3 is in the middle of my sleepy time, I will not be having many, if any, bets for qualifying.

The 2025 Japanese GP Race Day Update will be posted on Saturday afternoon UK time, and that is when we should be having the lion’s share of the weekend’s bets.

-JamesPunt