Red Bull boss lauds flawless Verstappen after surprise win at Suzuka

SUZUKA, Japan - Max Verstappen won the Japanese Grand Prix from pole for the fourth straight year on Sunday but Red Bull team principal Christian Horner thought the Dutchmans 64th race victory was one of his best ever.

McLaren have set the pace this season as Verstappen struggled with the RB21 but the four-times world champion got every inch of performance out of the car in qualifying on Saturday before racing it to victory on Sunday.

We know that McLarens are very, very fast, and it needed Max to be inch perfect with two very fast McLarens right behind him, and for 53 laps, he made not a single mistake, Horner told reporters.

I think thats one of Maxs best weekends. We literally turned the car upside down, set-up wise, and hes worked very hard with the engineering team.

Finally, we were able to give him a car that he could make use of in (qualifying) yesterday, with the most stunning lap, and then convert that today in a straight fight, putting him one point behind in the drivers championship.

Verstappen was delighted with the victory but was clear that the package he had at his disposal was not going to be good enough to compete for a fifth world title.

We still have work to do, we still have limitations, but knowing these limitations you try to find out how much you can push it, he said.

To fight for the title, we need more.

While Verstappen moved to within a point of Lando Norris in the drivers standings, Red Bull are only third in the manufacturers championship, 50 points behind McLaren and 14 behind Mercedes.

Horner made the call to bring in Japans Yuki Tsunoda as the teams second driver last week, sending Liam Lawson back to the