Race details | |||
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Race 14 of 19 in the 2015 Formula One season | |||
Suzuka Circuit
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Date | 27 September 2015 | ||
Official name | 2015 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix | ||
Location |
Suzuka Circuit Suzuka, Japan |
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Course | Permanent racing facility | ||
Course length | 5.807 km (3.608 mi) | ||
Distance | 53 laps, 307.471 km (191.054 mi) | ||
Weather | Partly cloudy 27 °C (81 °F) air temperature 52–54 °C (126–129 °F) track temperature 4.5 m/s (15 ft/s) wind from the east |
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Pole position | |||
Driver | Mercedes | ||
Time | 1:32.584 | ||
Fastest lap | |||
Driver | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | |
Time | 1:36.145 on lap 33 | ||
Podium | |||
First | Mercedes | ||
Second | Mercedes | ||
Third | Ferrari | ||
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The 2015 Japanese Grand Prix (formally known as the 2015 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race that was held on 27 September 2015 at the Suzuka Circuit in Suzuka, Japan. The race was the fourteenth round of the 2015 season, and marked the forty-second running of the Japanese Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton entered the race as the defending winner of the Grand Prix and Drivers' Championship leader with a 41-point lead over his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg. Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel came into the event eight points further back in third. Mercedes led the Constructors' Championship over Ferrari by 153 points, with Williams a further 110 points behind Ferrari.
Hamilton won the race, having overtaken Rosberg at the start, who fell back to fourth, but recovered to finish second. Rosberg's deficit in the Drivers' Championship therefore increased to 48 points. Sebastian Vettel finished third for Ferrari. This was the first race in which all cars were classified as finishers since the 2011 European Grand Prix, and would not be replicated again until the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix.
For the third year in a row, Pirelli opted to bring its two hardest dry weather compounds for this event, the orange-banded hard compound as the "prime" selection, while the white-banded medium tyre used as the "option" selection. The two wet-weather tyres, the green-banded intermediate and blue-banded full wet tyres, were also available to use as they are at all events. Pirelli cited the nature of the track and the high lateral energy loads experienced in the corners, in particular 130R — typically taken at full throttle and top speed in dry weather racing — as reasons for the hardest tyres being used. The suppliers expected a performance difference of 0.6–0.8 seconds per lap between the compounds.