Teenager stuns with second consecutive Grand Prix win

Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) won the Japanese Grand Prix comfortably on March 29 to become the only teenager to have won more than one Grand Prix.

The 19 year-old drove extremely well for the entire weekend and took pole position in qualifying.

Teammate George Russell was a little unlucky to only finish fourth in the race but was close to his teammate and ahead of him for some time. Better luck next time.

Oscar Piastri (McLaren) had a good run to finish second, and could have won the race but for a strategic decision to go into the pits early.

In third spot after a decent drive was Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) just two seconds behind Piastri, while Russell finished only half a second behind Leclerc.

The second car from Woking, driven by world champion Lando Norris (McLaren) was fifth, so this was a much better performance for team McLaren.

There was a lot of overtaking during the race, making for an exciting event.

The new regulations have certainly given us a timely taste of closer racing.

Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren are much closer this year, which means that we should be in for a very exciting season.

The greatest disappointment (except for Aston Martin) is the Red Bull team of Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, which finished in eighth and 12th respectively.

Besides being a little short of power it was strange to see the Red Bulls handling badly and the brilliant Verstappen was not happy.

Lewis Hamilton drove well but was a little unlucky after being as high as second place after the start to only finish sixth.

Pierre Gasly (Alpine) drove the wheels off his car to finish in seventh place.

Liam Lawson (RB), using the new Red Bull Ford engine, finished in ninth position with his teammate Arvid Lindlad came in 14th place after both cars had performed well in practice and qualifying.

Esteban Ocon was the luckiest of the Haas Ferrari team, finishing 10th, while teammate Oliver Bearman had a nasty accident resulting in high impact into the catch fence.

Fortunately, after experiencing a 50G stop he was still all right and limped away from the accident.

The accident was to be investigated after the race.

The two Audis are growing in stature, race by race, and also did well to finish in 11th and 13th positions respectively (Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto).

The two Cadillacs are improving slowly, with Sergio Perez 17th and Valtteri Bottas 19th out of 22 cars.

It was sad to see that, even in front of the Japanese home crowd, the Honda powered Aston Martins of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll could do no better than 18th and 21st places.

Honda have admitted that they have a vibration problem which needs a complete redesign to solve which is going to take some time. It is with great anticipation that we await the green cars performing properly again.

After the cancellation of the Saudi and Bahrain races in the troubled Middle East we now have a big gap to the next race in Miami on Sunday, May 3.

Oh dear, we have no races to watch during our lovely month of April here on the sunny South Coast.

DRIVERS
1 Kimi Antonelli 72
2 George Russell 63
3 Charles Leclerc 49
4 Lewis Hamilton 41
5 Lando Norris 25

CONSTRUCTORS
1 Mercedes 135
2 Ferrari 90
3 McLaren 46
4 Haas 18
5 Alpine 16

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