Why do drivers rate Suzuka as their favourite circuit when pole usually wins and there is very little chance of overtaking? Sunday's race was quite boring once Max Verstappen got to the first corner before Lando Norris. - Stuart The two things - the concept of a favourite circuit and one where overtaking is very difficult and the racing therefore sometimes uneventful - are not mutually exclusive. Just look at Monaco. The drivers love the challenge of the track, but accept the race is likely going to be processional. So too with Suzuka. Some drivers did remark on the lack of action. But Fernando Alonso had a more nuanced take. Alonso has won at both Monaco and Suzuka, and made one of his greatest - one of the greatest - overtaking moves there when he passed Michael Schumacher's Ferrari around the outside of 130R in 2005. Alonso said: "This is Suzuka. I don't remember a race many times in the past where there is lots of overtaking without the weather changing. "It seems every year 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 say: 'Ah, Monaco is boring, what can we do to the track? Suzuka is boring.' "Instead of looking at the negative, I try to enjoy the experience, and it was another great Suzuka." One thing is worth mentioning here. The resurfacing of the track in the first sector changed Suzuka this year from a circuit where tyre degradation was high, to one where it was low. That changed the race from a two-stop strategy to a one. Add in the difficulty of overtaking to an event where there were no significant tyre-pace offsets developing, and the race was always likely to be processional. This, though, led to a race that was driven pretty much flat out all the way by the drivers. And that - rare in the Pirelli era - they enjoy. So just because it fell short as entertainment, as a challenge for the drivers, it was very real. Max Verstappen - sensational all weekend on his way to victory - said: "It was a fun race. The whole race I saw two orange cars in my mirror and, especially those last 20 laps, we were pushing quite hard out there. You had to keep on fighting it, basically being on the limit." On the limit for an hour and a half around the greatest circuit on the planet. No racing driver is ever going to find that boring.