Alonso likens Suzuka to uneventful Monaco, amid overtaking drought

Fernando Alonso has compared Suzuka to Monaco in terms of being a Formula 1 race that is basically won on a Saturday during qualifying.

Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix saw a dearth of overtaking as the spectacle failed to spark into an entertaining race with Max Verstappen winning from pole.

It is something that has become an issue in recent years at Suzuka in the same way that Monaco has been highlighted as a race where success is determined by a driver’s starting position.

F1 will be hoping the Monaco issue is now set to be solved after it introduced two mandatory pitstops for the 2025 grand prix.

But Alonso, who finished 11th for Aston Martin on Sunday, fears Suzuka may have now gone the same way as the race in Monte Carlo.

“This is Suzuka, I don’t remember a race when we saw too many overtakes here without the weather changing,” said the two-time F1 world champion.

“It seems like we repeat always on Thursday, how great Suzuka is, how great Monaco is, the glamour, the spectacular weekend.

“And then on Sunday, we wake up and we say: ‘Monaco is boring. What can we do to the track?’ ‘Suzuka is boring.’ This is Formula 1, and Suzuka is great, because Saturday is incredibly high adrenaline.”

Speaking after the race, Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur said this season could become a “quali world championship” if the trend of struggling to overtake seen in both China and Japan continues.

In what is the final year of the current regulations, there has not only been a convergence in car design but simultaneously teams have also found ways around rules that were originally introduced to promote more overtaking.

Across 2024 there were 70 fewer overtakes than a year earlier, despite there being two extra grands prix. All four races in 2025 meanwhile (three grands prix and one sprint) have been won from pole.

Maybe one stop was not the race that we were hoping for,” added Alonso on Sunday’s grand prix. “In the past with multiple stops, maybe the tyres are different but when we don’t have grip, we complain that there is no grip and when we have too many stops.

“We complain the tyres don’t last, so instead of seeing the negative part of the weekend I try to enjoy what we experienced this weekend.”

Suzuka began an F1 triple-header with this weekend being the Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Saudi Arabia next week.