Race Report: Fernando 2.0

The 2008 Japanese Grand Prix was certainly an entertaining one. Even in the dry weather the Fuji Speedway circuit has proven to be a track where overtaking is possible and with the title contenders getting it spectacularly wrong in the opening laps the door opened for a winner from another team, and the man who took the bull by the horns was two time champion Fernando Alonso, who drove an incredible race to easily win the race from Robert Kubica and Kimi Raikkonen (remember him?). The race had numerous incidents, assloads of controversy and plenty of overtaking, making for a good spectacle. The fun and games began at the first corner when pole sitter Lewis Hamilton made a poor start and attempted a daft maneuver to regain the lead from Kimi Raikkonen. This resulted in Hamilton making contact with the defending world champion and forcing a bunch of cars wide, allowing Robert Kubica to lead Alonso and with the McLaren's and Ferrari's 5th-8th. Further back there was more drama as the scattering cars resulted in veteran David Coulthard getting tagged by someone. A couple of corners later his suspension broke, pitching the scot into the barriers. Lewis would end up getting a drive through penalty for his efforts which was justified. The next talking point was the following lap at the chicane complex at the back where Felipe Massa rather cruelly punted Hamilton into a spin, dropping the championship leader to the back of the pack and leaving him with a wounded McLaren. Felipe would get a drive through of his own for that boneheaded move. So as things calmed down it was Kubica from Alonso, but with Alonso running with a lot more fuel. At their first pitstops Fernando managed to leapfrog Robert, which essentially won him the race while ahead Jarno Trulli, Sebastien Bourdais, and Nelson Piquet took their turn at leading the race before they pitted. From then on the race at the front was between Kubica and Alonso, with the double world champion winning the battle. At the end of the race Kubica came under pressure from Kimi Raikkonen, resulting in a ding-dong battle which Kubica won. The second place, coupled with Felipe and Lewis's woes vaults Kubica back into championship contention. The Pole is 12 points back with two races to go, but with the two contenders working so hard to lose the championship there may still be an opening for him to surprise, or at least remain in contention going into Brazil. This race also featured some potentially job saving drives from Nelson Piquet and Sebastien Bourdais. Piquet finished fourth, right on the tail of Kimi Raikkonen, while Bourdais finished sixth on the road, ahead of Sebastien Vettel. Bourdais would cruelly have his points taken away after a ridiculous penalty for an incident with Felipe Massa. Bourdais came out of the pits and had the inside line while Massa tried to go around the outside. Bourdais had nowhere to go and Felipe chopped in front of him and clipped the front of the Toro Rosso, pitching his Ferrari into a spin. Somehow, maybe after too muck Sake, the stewards managed to rule that Bourdais was at fault when in reality he was a passenger in the whole mess and gave him a 25 second penalty, dropping him to tenth. This decision crucially boosted Felipe Massa to 7th, and an extra point, cutting the gap to Hamilton to five points. The Bourdais farce lifted teammate Seb Vettel to sixth, Massa to seventh, and Mark Webber to 8th, the "A" Red Bull team getting soundly beaten by the "B" team again. Of the other teams, Williams had yet another shitty day with Nico Rosberg being nowhere and Kaz Nakajima busting his front wing in the first corner shenanigans and finishing last. Honda as usual were crap again, this time Barichello beat Button while neither Force India finished the race, Sutil having a puncture break his suspension and Fisichella a broken gearbox.

This race has proven two things, one that Fernando Alonso is still probably the best driver in F1 and that Formula One needs to have permanent stewards. The Bourdais penalty went against Race director Charlie Whiting's orders and could have an important impact on the championship. I hope that the issue of stewarding gets addressed because the FIA does not need dubious stewarding decisions to be the main headline as opposed to the fact that the race was pretty entertaining when all is said and done.