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Hello and a very warm welcome to the late breaking F1 podcast presented by Sam Sage and me, Ben Hocking, for qualifying at the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuki, a qualifying session where

Max Vastappen took his first poll position

of the season ahead of the two McLarence of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, respectively.

Sam, once we'd got rid of all the fires at the track, we actually had a good session.

Because Suzuki can't hand you just how hot F1 is right now. You know, that was worth waking up early for it. I say early, it was, you know, I had to get up at about up past six in the morning. It's really not the end of the world. But when it's that good, when it's that good, ho, ho, ho, F1 is worth watching. That was such a fun qualifying session.

So much to talk about up and down the field.

I'm very excited to talk a second about that lap from Max Verstappen, though.

Yes, because outside of a pole position, Max Verstappen also claiming the lap record at Susuka, managing to get into the late 126s eventually.

It did look as if McLaren had the edge on the field, as was expected, for the first

two and a half sessions of this session.

But Max Verstappen, at the end, pulling out a brilliant lap to go 12,000ths of a second faster than

Lando Norris.

What a lap?

Dare I say, his best ever qualifying lap in Formula One.

I've already had remarks of Monaco, 23, which I think is a fair shout as a combatant to this. But there,

you know how good that 2023 season was, what he picked up 19 wings, 21 podiums across that

year. Realistically, it was Max Verstappen at the beginning of the peak of his powers,

plus a car that was very much at the peak of its powers combining.

Here, on the other hand, he's the defending champion, arguably in the third best car at the moment.

And wowzer, what a lap that was, where we saw Piastri make a mistake in the first sector,

where we've seen Norris not been able to get a full lap, 100% tied together despite electric pace for both McLaren drivers.

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