Formula 1's 2026 season will go on a five-week hiatus after this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix, following the recent cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia races.

There won't be as big a break in racing until the winter break in late December, leaving some key questions to be answered at the last F1 race for some time…

How badly will Honda's home race go?

Honda felt it made progress across the Australian and Chinese GP weekends, and will have benefitted too from this two-week gap to try to solve more of its problems.

But it admits it's coming from such a troubled position that whatever progress it makes will be nowhere near enough.

"We must find more solutions to establish the cause of the vibrations affecting the drivers," Shintaro Orihara, Honda's trackside general manager and chief engineer, said ahead of Suzuka.

"We have also focused our efforts in the gap between China and Japan to continue to improve our reliability, but still our performance is not where we want it to be, especially regarding energy management."

So Honda's chances of its engine lasting to the finish sound like they've improved, but what hasn't is the performance or the issue that's hurting its drivers.

And speaking of the drivers, there's a way for an embarrassing Honda home weekend to come across even worse... - Matt Beer

And how will Alonso react?

When Aston Martin did its 2026 Honda deal in 2023, Honda's engines were powering Red Bull to championships and questions about a potentially awkward Honda/Fernando Alonso reunion seemed redundant.

Yes, that had been a terrible relationship in the mid-2010s and left both parties eager to avoid each other, but this was a different world of Honda performance now. It would be a harmonious fresh start, all past jibes forgotten, right?

Maybe not. And Alonso waving at a Cadillac as it overtook him in China, and hoping the TV cameras were catching him being overtaken all over the place, showed he's already back in full mischief mode.

It was at Suzuka in 2015 that he made his (in)famous repeated "GP2 engine!" outbursts about the Honda engine's performance as his McLaren was left standing by rivals.

With the caveat that the Japanese GP that year was round 14 of the season and you'd really hope Honda is in a better place by round 14 of 2026, it's worth noting that the McLaren-Honda performance that left Alonso so audibly furious 11 years ago was an 11th-place finish from 12th on the grid.

Aston Martin-Honda and Alonso don't look like they'll be anywhere near those 'lofty' heights this weekend. - MB

How will Mercedes and Ferrari compare at Suzuka?

Whether it's been through sheer outright pace or mild strategic missteps, so far in F1 2026, the excitement of Ferrari taking the fight to Mercedes, welcome though it is, has been only a brief narrative point in the first two grands prix of this new era.

Might Suzuka be the place where that changes?

If it is to happen, based on the limited but compelling evidence of the first two weekends, it'll need circumstances to come together. The Mercedes is undeniably the best package at this early stage of the rules cycle, and has had enough pace in hand even when compromised to charge back past the often-fast-starting Ferrari.

But Suzuka is a very different track to Albert Park or Shanghai. It's fast and flowing - the first sector in particular - and aerodynamic performance will be of much greater significance as a result. No better time, then, to put theories about the Ferrari chassis to the test.

So much of that Ferrari 'what if' will depend on how raceable these cars are, too, as overtaking has often been at a premium in the Japanese GP.

But if that's carried over into this ruleset, and if there's a touch of Charles Leclerc/Lewis Hamilton magic to place on the front row - or if either qualifies close enough to it to launch into the lead on the run to Turn 1 - the elements are there for a repeat of Max Verstappen's defensive masterclass at the front from 2025. - Jack Cozens

Will F1 2026 blunt Suzuka's best corners?

Put the 'yo-yo' overtaking aside for a second. The aspect of F1 2026 that's really, really upsetting its critics is the fact that it's better in qualifying to back off in some fast corners to harvest energy to deploy for a straightline speed boost elsewhere than it is to take those corners at the limit of grip and ability. That is an understandably hideous concept for a proportion of fans.

It's been offensive enough at Albert Park and Shanghai, circuits that are not exactly legendary for particularly challenging corners.

But this weekend we look set to see drivers lifting through Suzuka's 130R and perhaps through elements of its glorious first-sector Esses too because taking those corners 'properly' and being left energy-starved on straights will be a net laptime loss.

If you didn't like the sight and sound of qualifying laps in Australia and China, you're going to hate it in Japan.

But have you also found modern-era Japanese GPs offensively processional? Suzuka is far from a hotbed of overtaking these days. Given the very different characteristics of the Mercedes and Ferrari battling up front, there should be plenty of passing and repassing in Japan this year.

Is that an acceptable trade-off? F1 2026's first visit to a truly epic track is going to be very revealing - and potentially even more polarising than the races we've had already. - MB

How will Antonelli's maiden win change him? 

Kimi Antonelli's stellar Chinese GP victory eliminated any bubbling questions of when his first F1 victory will come - and instead threw up a different one.

Is Antonelli at a level where he can deliver George Russell-beating weekends consistently in 2026, or did he simply benefit in China from Russell being compromised in both grand prix qualifying and the grand prix?

That's not to take anything away from Antonelli's maiden win. The way he bolted clear while Russell squabbled with the Ferraris was superb and critical to his victory.

But we need to see a proper Russell versus Antonelli head-to-head this year, given Antonelli's FP3 crash (which led to his last-minute arrival in qualifying) meant Australia wasn't much of a clear comparison either.

Suzuka will be a good test of that. Antonelli had a rough time in practice at Suzuka last year, struggling for confidence in the high-speed first sector, but he did recover to within three tenths of Russell come qualifying, and finished right behind him in the race. 

That will give us further clues about whether we can expect one or two Mercedes drivers in the title fight this year. - Josh Suttill 

Can McLaren spark its title defence into life?

McLaren's meagre points tally of 18 means it's having the worst F1 title defence in over a decade. It must get that back on track at Suzuka.

One key question will be whether there's a proper understanding and a permanent fix for the two faults on the same Mercedes power unit component that led to Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri failing to start in China.

That's tricky for McLaren as it's highly reliant on Mercedes for the data, but right now, for whatever reason, McLaren is having the most costly Mercedes power unit reliability woes.

McLaren's unlikely to find itself suddenly in the mix with Mercedes and Ferrari this weekend, and may face a sterner challenge from Red Bull.

It needs to wait until the Miami GP for upgrades it hopes can lift it into the lead fight.

But in the meantime, at Suzuka, banking a clean weekend with a healthy points total, and continuing to claw into the works Mercedes team's engine exploitation advantage, are the key objectives. - JS

Can Red Bull escape F1's midfield?

We might be at peak 'Verstappen could leave F1 completely' narrative because of Red Bull being dropped into the midfield in China, his hatred for these rules, and another win (before disqualification) at the Nurburgring.

But Suzuka is a great place for Red Bull to fight back. While its win last year in different cars is less relevant, team principal Laurent Mekies said "I expect that we can be more competitive from the next round in Japan" - so that's encouraging.

At least from my interpretation of Red Bull's drivers describing the car's main issues, it's lacking grip and has understeer and oversteer repetition, so I'm not sure the style of track here is going to solve those problems.

But Mekies' confidence comes from the lessons it has learned with the new rules so far, and it would be a bit silly of him to declare it can be more competitive without evidence to go off.

I'm pretty sure Verstappen is going to despise what the new rules and energy management do to neuter the challenge of Suzuka. So a return to form for Red Bull will be the absolute minimum if this weekend is to be the first step in appeasing Verstappen's 2026 mood. - Jack Benyon