REPORT: A Strong Saturday in Suzuka

A third successive Q3 for Atlassian Williams Racing has the team set to start the 2025 Japanese GP from a top-10 grid slot.

Alex Albon's best effort was only 0.632 off the leader with a 1:27.615 lap that saw him just five milliseconds from the fourth row in P9.

It was close to two FW47s in qualifying's final minutes, too, with Carlos Sainz 0.053s from the Q3 cut off.

Carlos will begin Sunday's race from P15 after setting a 1:27.836 in Q2 but receiving a three-place penalty for impeding another driver.

With trackside fires again disrupting the day, our driver duo did well to navigate the reduced running and find so much speed.

The Carbono combo will hunt for points in the race. A mixed approach for FP3 had the two drivers trying the Medium and Hard tyres.

Carlos set the most laps of anyone, with most of his 22 tours of Suzuka on the white-walled compound.

Meanwhile, Alex explored how much he could extract from the Mediums in his 19 laps, with the combined 41 laps being the most of any team in FP3.

Efforts to maximise the race pace should help for the 53-lap race, which still has the possibility of rain hanging over it.

"Well done, everyone," said Alex as he crossed the line in Q3.

"That was a good change-up. The last run, honestly, the car felt so different."

Team Principal James Vowles echoed those thoughts, saying, "That's a good lap, Alex. We've got a good car for tomorrow as well. Well done."

Alex was feeling positive after another Q3, and said, "That wasn’t bad! I’m happy with another Q3; we have a pretty consistent car!

"My best lap felt very different to the other laps though. We need to go through it all and understand why it changed, but that lap felt how I wanted it to feel.

"The balance that I’d been chasing was there. There are a couple of corners on the track that we’ve struggled with so if we can improve on those, we’ll be even more competitive.

"Tomorrow looks like it’s going to start off wet and then get drier and drier, so the call to switch will be important. It should be a good race."

The penalty demoted Carlos from his P12 qualification, meaning he'll start further back. Our Spaniard summed his Saturday up by saying, "Mixed feelings today.

"We’ve made some good progress this weekend and I felt a lot more comfortable with the car; there are still a few things to adjust here and there of course, but this track requires a lot of confidence and I do feel we’ve taken a step forward.

"On the other hand, I lost around a tenth on S3 on my last lap, so Q3 was reachable and I’m obviously not happy I missed it.

"However, I prefer to take the positives from today and focus on tomorrow’s race, where we’ll try to do everything to gain some positions and have a positive Sunday."

A buoyant James Vowles, Atlassian Williams Racing's Team Principal, shared his thoughts and said, "It’s great to see that we are at our third race of the season and the car has remained competitive and able to get into Q3.

"Carlos has made some brilliant steps in the time since China, and you can see his performance is really coming together now.

"I’m proud of Alex; he put together a great lap and, from his own commentary, I think there was more in it, but the want and desire to be further ahead than where we are is a good thing.

"What’s more positive is we have made more of a race than Qualifying car. Let’s see what happens tomorrow with the conditions, but I’m looking forward to it."