Hamilton fastest by a second at Suzuka

2015 Japanese Grand Prix lap times and fastest laps

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Despite having lost pole position to his team mate in qualifying, Lewis Hamilton lapped a full second quicker in the race.

The Mercedes pair both took sets of hard tyres for the final stint of the race – Hamilton’s were new, Rosberg’s used – and Hamilton’s first lap out of the pits was fractionally more than a second quicker than Rosberg managed just two laps earlier.

No one else got within one-and-three-quarter seconds of Hamilton’s pace in the race – a remarkable turnaround following the team’s sub-par performance at Singapore one week ago.

Hamilton was particularly pleased with how good his car’s set-up was as all the teams had missed out on dry running on Friday due to rain.

“This has been a circuit that I can honestly say that I’ve struggled [at] through all the years that I’ve come here,” said Hamilton, “but one that I’ve loved driving.”

“You really want to come here and dominate at a track like this. I was able to get the balance in the right place, my engineers did an amazing job – Bonno, Ricky and just the whole crew did a great job to get the car, with the short amount of time we had, in a beautiful window.”

“It was better today than it was even in qualifying. I was really able to work on my lines and improve and at the front there it was just a beautiful… it’s like sailing. When you go through the corners here, it’s flowing.”

After setting his fastest lap of 1’36.145 Hamilton back off considerably – his next-best lap was 1.7 seconds slower – yet he still had enough in hand to win by

2015 Japanese Grand Prix lap times

All the lap times by the drivers in seconds. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, click name to highlight, right-click to reset:

2015 Japanese Grand Prix fastest laps

Each driver’s fastest lap:

RankDriverCarFastest lapGapOn lap
1Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’36.14533
2Nico RosbergMercedes1’37.1471.00231
3Sebastian VettelFerrari1’37.9061.76132
4Kimi RaikkonenFerrari1’38.0351.89032
5Pastor MaldonadoLotus-Mercedes1’38.1361.99139
6Romain GrosjeanLotus-Mercedes1’38.1672.02235
7Max VerstappenToro Rosso-Renault1’38.2372.09232
8Valtteri BottasWilliams-Mercedes1’38.2412.09641
9Nico HulkenbergForce India-Mercedes1’38.3312.18643
10Daniil KvyatRed Bull-Renault1’38.3662.22136
11Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes1’38.5912.44650
12Felipe MassaWilliams-Mercedes1’38.5952.45051
13Carlos Sainz JnrToro Rosso-Renault1’38.6862.54116
14Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-Renault1’38.8982.75332
15Marcus EricssonSauber-Ferrari1’39.3433.19828
16Fernando AlonsoMcLaren-Honda1’39.6143.46945
17Felipe NasrSauber-Ferrari1’40.0883.94339
18Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Honda1’40.1213.97631
19Will StevensManor-Ferrari1’41.4525.30744
20Alexander RossiManor-Ferrari1’41.4675.32235

2015 Japanese Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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13 comments on “Hamilton fastest by a second at Suzuka”

  1. Fact Vettel finished so close to Rosberg should really concern the him.

    1. Yeah…. That was weird man. It was apparent that Mercedes is faster than Ferrari, but it also became apparent that Rosberg was not so much compared to Vettel.

    2. Rosberg has started to have serious trouble staying ahead of Vettel.

  2. I think it could also be a case of management. Rosberg doesn’t need to have a huge gap ahead of Vettel when he crosses the finish line. He just needs to be a bit ahead ofnhim. Why waste resources as in engine wear and tear etc by having a bigger gap than needed? Playing devil’s advocate here. I mean Rosberg with his fastest lap had quite a gap with Vettel after all no? Or it could be that Vettel in the Ferrari is a better racing package than Rosberg in the Merc which also points out that both man and machine need to be in harmony to win in F1 as well.

    1. I’ll take the second one, thank you. :D

  3. I really regret to say that, because I said Rosberg was a better package a year ago. Lewis is on a different planet to Nico now. I cannot stand Lewis, I really cannot but when his head is under a helmet, he’s damn good. Nico is only an outstanding second driver and i bite my tongue by saying it. He needs to look into himself for next year or he will be another Rubens or another Felipe. The mental dominance Lewis is building is very dangerous for Nico. Today he wouldn’t even challenge Sebastian if the undercut wouldn’t work.

    1. @Luca Nuvolari
      I think he missed his chance in 2014, he will have to fight this time not only Lewis but Vettel who his eager to mark his territory, he is giving his all but deep down he knows he can’t match drivers like Lewis or Vettel under normal circumstances.

  4. Yeah I was suspicious at the time that Rosberg was also lacking the pace.

  5. Is there a stat for the fastest fastest lap of the race? meaning the gap to the second fastest driver….

    1. ColdFly F1 - @coldfly (@)
      27th September 2015, 19:28

      I’ll bite! @ivan-vinitskyy
      How does ‘fastest fastest lap’ differ from ‘fastest lap’? (which you can see above)
      Isn’t the gap to the second fastest driver equal to ‘gap to fastest driver’ less 1.002sec (i.e. gap between Ros and Ham)??

      1. @coldfly My measure of ‘fastness’ in fastest lap of the race is the difference between best and second best drivers’ times. Yes in this case the value is 1.002 which I think makes Hamilton’s time quite fast. What I wanted to know if analyze all fastest laps, perhaps for the last 5 years, and see where it stacks up because it does seem quite unusual.

  6. The new chart for all laps is horrible. I used to love coming here to compare teammates, now there is now way to filter down to just two drivers.

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