JAPANESE GP: WINNERS & LOSERS

Fernando Alonso won another controversial race where both Championship contenders cocked up - and the stewards did their best to emulate the Eurovision song contest.

STAR OF THE RACE 
Fernando Alonso, Renault, 1st
He took advantage of an opening lap where chaos reigned. With Kovalainen out of the way and Raikkonen buffered by Robert Kubica, Fernando Alonso was able to score another unlikely victory. It wasn't as unlikely as the race before, but it wasn't undeserved. Alonso set some very fast laps on his way to victory and when Raikkonen put the hammer down mid-race he could catch Kubica but made no impression on Alonso.

Overtaking Move of the Race
Lap 2 - Lewis Hamilton on Felipe Massa
If indeed Lewis Hamilton had flatspotted his tyres as badly as Ted Kravitz said he had, then to make a move up the inside of Felipe Massa was very neat and brilliantly executed - considering the vibration there must have been. It wasn't his fault that Massa lost the plot, cut the chicane and crashed into him. In fact it probably helped his World Championship (see below for why)

LOSERS
Uncoventionally, we're having the losers first this race, because there were far more losers than winners - and also because it was such a fantastic race. But fantastic in the sense of being bizarre and extraordinary. Not fanastic, good.

Race Stewards
Let's leave aside the Bourdais vs Massa incident because that has a place in the annals of crap stewards decisions all of its own. Let's look at the first corner. Hamilton makes an appalling start and doesn't have the sense to realise when he's beaten. It's Brazil 2007 all over again with him fighting Alonso when he doesn't need to. Complete and utter brain fade and all this after doing a lot of pre-race interviews saying how he's going to play it differently this year.

He runs wide after late braking and takes Raikkonen across the track, before Kovalainen intercedes and pushes the Ferrari over the edge. No worries there. Kimi loves tarmac run-off, he used it generously at Fuji last year, he used it at Spa and he also left no room for Lewis at Spa so Lewis was forced off track himself.

How does that deserve a drive-through penalty? We've seen it happen at virtually every GP and yet it gets no remark from the stewards at all. By the time it was given Lewis was so far back it just made me laugh.

It's like when you're stuck driving behind a very old person and you know something's going to happen sooner or later. You just have to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all - knowing that sooner or later something dodgy's going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it apart from watch. And then it does.

And would you believe it something else did. The Bourdais vs Massa incident looked likely to result in Massa getting another drive-through or maybe a grid deduction in the next race...and they penalise Bourdais.

Had it been the other way round on Lap 2 with Hamilton taking out Massa then Lewis would probably have been black-flagged and banned for the remaining races. You really couldn't make this kind of stuff up. F1 is in danger of equalling the Eurovision song contest - actually, no, Eurovision is quite fair in comparison, but just as laughable.

Lewis Hamilton, McLaren 12th
He may have been the victim of yet another mugging from the stewards, but he helped them tremendously by failing to concede that Raikkonen had got a better start than him. Presumably he is going to learn that discretion is the better part of valour at some time in his career, but you have to wonder when.

You could actually argue that he was very lucky that Felipe Massa chose to collide with him in such an overt way. Because if his tyres were well and truly shagged after Turn 1 and he needed to come into the pits on Lap 3 or 4, then he would still have taken the drop in places. Massa would have sailed on for what could have been P1 or P2 but certainly no worse than P3.

Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 7th
Massa's elevation from 8th to 7th was unexpected and undeserved, though he did put a brave overtaking move on Mark Webber to take P8 by diving down the pitlane exit. The only reason that that wasn't the overtaking move of the race was the fact that his Ferrari was on the harder tyre - and two seconds a lap quicker - while Webber had no tyres at all.

Given the colossal mistakes that both Hamilton and Massa can make, the drivers' title is probably not going to be decided by one or two points, but by a handful - certainly on the basis of these two performances. Massa's thrust into the side of Hamilton's McLaren was that of a barely competent F3 driver failing to understand that he'd lost the place and just as stupid as Hamilton's Turn 1.

The difference is that Lewis wrecked his own race at Turn 1 whereas Massa specifically targeted Hamilton. What was worse for Felipe is that if he hadn't done it, he could probably have come away from mount Fuji with a World Championship lead.

Nelson Piquet Junior, Renault 4th
Thanks to Pat Symmonds' wily strategy Junior looked on the verge of taking a podium place on merit. His tyres were in much better shape than Raikkonen's or Kubica's as he closed up to 0.6 behind the Ferrari with seven laps to go. And then he blew it - just as he's blown it so many times before. He still finished fourth (provided the stewards don't penalise him 25 seconds for having a 1980s haircut) but all of a sudden he was 7.5 seconds behind Raikkonen.

Toyota
At their home GP, at their home track, they had to watch Renault all but clinch fourth place in the constructors' championship. Renault's 1st and 4th compared to Jarno Trulli's 5th means that the task is nigh on impossible in the remaining two GPs.

ITV Commentary
Now you know how much they miss Steve Rider. The normally unflappable Martin Brundle had to stand in as frontman and like Hamilton in Turn 1, his brain faded. The usually assiduous judge of race incidents was replaced by someone desperately hedging and short of an opinion.

Mark Blundell was sorely underused because Brundle couldn't be in two places at the same time. As a result we got far les Blundellisms than usual and had to make do with his Saturday comment on Pedro de la Rosa's view of Kovalainen's performance:

"It's frustrating, I think he knows he could do a good job, if not a better-er job."

WINNERS
Chinese GP
There were whole grandstands at Mount Fuji that were barely filled, but the ding-dong nature of the Drivers' title means that there's everything to race for at Shanghai. Had Hamilton won with Massa spinning out, there might have been little to boost attendance, but the contoversial nature of the Fuji race should do the trick.

Robert Kubica, 2nd, BMW
It's ironic that pre-race Kubica was talking about Lewis Hamilton's aggressive defence of places at Monza. That didn't inhibit from an attempt to put Kimi Raikkonen on the grass atTurns 2 and 3 when he was challenging with a seemingly quicker car.

Right now Robert's head must be full of what-might-have-been scenarios. If BMW had put more effort into developing the car after Canada who knows where he might have been in the drivers' title race? And so if he was grumpy in Singapore, he has good reason.

If Massa and Hamilton have each other off again he can still do it - as Fernando said before the race: "it's F1, anythingis possible."

Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 3rd 
At last some points and Ferrari are back in charge of the Constructors' title race. Raikkonen was quick early on, settled back, and then was quick again in his pursuit of Kubica. If he'd been gunning for the title, then he probably wouldn't have accepted third place.

Andrew Davies

Source : Planet F1