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Ferrari's Carlos Sainz, who finished in third: “I had a good race to be honest I’m very happy, it was quite tough out there with the degradation but then suddenly the clouds came and the degradation went a lot lower and suddenly I felt that maybe a one-stop was quicker, we were on the two and I had to overtake a lot of cars today and yeah overtaking was tricky. Always at Suzuka you have to nail the last chicane to get a good run into Turn One, I could finish my moves but it was tough out there.”

On the tyres and track conditions, he added: “Honestly I thought it was on but I thought it was going to be very difficult to get back to fourth, or P3 with how tricky it was to overtake the Mercedes on the second stint and how close it was to follow, I knew I needed a very big delta to approach Lando and Charles and in the end we managed.

"We were really quick on that hard tyre, I liked how it gave me good feelings to push, and I could get the moves done and get that podium.”

On racing in China in a two weeks’ time, he said: “I think it’s going to be a tough weekend for everyone when you do a Sprint to a track that we haven’t been to in four or five years, only one hour of practice is going to be a challenge.”