Verstappen crushed the opposition in Suzuka by taking his 13th victory of the season from pole by 19.3 seconds over McLaren's Lando Norris.
The result secured Red Bull's sixth constructors' title on the home circuit of its power unit partner Honda and also moved Verstappen to the brink of a third straight drivers' championship.
The win came one week after Red Bull's first defeat of 2023 in an off-kilter Singapore Grand Prix, where Verstappen finished fifth after qualifying outside the top 10.
Amid suggestions that an FIA technical directive introduced from Singapore had somehow dented Red Bull's form, Verstappen's win was an emphatic display of the contrary, with the Dutchman saying doubters could "go suck on an egg" after taken pole.
Team boss Horner provided further evidence of how "fired up" Verstappen was to set the record straight after his Singapore loss.
"I played padel tennis with Max on Wednesday and he was properly fired up and he said: 'I want to win the race by 20 seconds'," Horner revealed on Sunday evening.
"And in fairness, he came within 0.7s of achieving that.
"You could tell from the very first lap in FP1 where on the hard tyre, he was 1.8 seconds quicker than the rest of the field on medium or soft tyres at that point, he was totally focused on this event.
"It was an outstanding performance. His final lap in qualifying has got to be up there with one of the best laps of all time in qualifying.
Source: Autosport