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The weather might have tried to steal the headlines, but once the typhoon cleared away it left a beautiful sunny Sunday at Suzuka in its wake, with some equally sparkling F1 action. So which of the drivers took the opportunity to shine once the storm clouds cleared?
Max Verstappen (Retired, L14): 7.5/10
It was never really Max Verstappen's weekend, with a series of niggling power problems on the Red Bull preventing him from really getting any momentum going in Suzuka. While he never strayed far from the top of the timesheets in practice, he also found himself slipping further and further away from the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers. He also won't like the way that his rookie team mate matched his pace in the final round of qualifying, right down to the thousandth of a second. As for the race, there's not much to say - Charles Leclerc's wandering Ferrari took him out in turn 2 at the start, and while he limped on for another 14 laps it was clear that the RB15 was too badly wounded to make the effort worthwhile and so he ended up being the sole retirement of the afternoon. In the weekend of a raging typhoon, Max's Japanese Grand Prix ended up being more of a damp squib than a flood, albeit through little fault of his own.
