You are listening to Mist Apex Podcast. We live F1.

Welcome to Mist Apex Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Reddy, but my friends call me Spaners. So let's be friends.

I'm joining you from a pillow fort in a hotel conference room on my family holiday. My wife is delighted.

Welcome to the Japanese Grand Prix race review. It was a heavyweight slug fest, won by split decision, the winner, and still the biggest threat on the F1 fight card

is Max Verstappen. Now, it wasn't a thrilling spectacle to watch. I'm not going to fight anyone on

that. There's no argument here. However, there was lots of interesting battles and tactics,

and those things were below the surface. I'll admit that. But even if you disagree and say

there was nothing interesting about the on-track action, it has advanced the storyline of F1 2025.

This wasn't a bottle episode. This wasn't the episode of Friends where they're getting dressed

for an event for the whole show. This was more like Ross gets a pet monkey.

The plot developed.

We learned things.

Now, I was listening on F1 TV, which I don't normally do,

and I'm a big fan of Jolian Palmer,

but I do think on the commentary they called the race completely wrong.

Palmer, to be fair to him, was trying to hype up the attack on Vastappen

and calling it as McLaren versus Vastappen,

because in his defence, that is what would make the best TV.

But I don't think that's what this was.

I think this was Norris versus Piaastri and nothing else.

That was Norris's race, and that is the race that he's won.

And I think that the fact that there was no team orders that came through in the end,

...