ALONSO WINS AGAIN AS LEWIS'S CHARGE STALLS
(Image taken from BBC)
The Japanese Grand Prix. One of the more traditional races out in the Far East and so, also one that has a lot of history behind it. James Hunt and Damon Hill both won world championships in Japan though only Hunt can claim to have won his title at the Fiji Motor Speedway. It's not people's idea of a classic track, a lot preferred Suzuka. However, Lewis certainly doesn't mind the place though, he won the race here last year in the pouring rain. This time around he came in leading the championship with Felipe Massa his main title rival but neither Kubica nor Raikonen could quite be counted out. The title was not on the line, yet. However the Japanese Grand Prix was still going to be as important as ever.
Well in Q1 Jenson's Honda's form ran out yet again and he would up starting P18, unable to improve at all in the dying seconds. DC made it into Q2 very nicely and at one point looked a pretty sure bet to make Q3 but in the end wound up settling for P11. Not so bad though. Glock was the first to set a Q3 time and he had been impressive in free practice earlier in the weekend. Raikonen then outgunned him though and the reigning world champion looked impossible to beat untill Lewis outgunned him in the last seconds. That's his sixth pole of the season and a great way to set himself up for the race, particularly with Massa down in P5! So far, advantage to the Brit.
In the race itself, well DC didn't last very long. He got caught up in a first-corner mid pack incident and immediately spun off the road! Not what he had in mind, but at least he got out safely. The Scot has just two races left in his career and surely he must be looking for decent results in both of them. Well he get them? Depends partly on how seriously Red Bull want to take the last two races. Add to the fact he's going to need a new chassis for China so we'll have to see what that comes out looking like. Still, having picked up points in Singapore, there's no reason for him to write off the last two races of his career. This season's not been the best way to end his career though.
Jenson in the meantime did brilliantly to start with, getting up as high as 10th, making people wonder if points were on the table. Next thing I knew though, the Honda man had wound up down in 16th! The team blamed trye graining for the downturn in performace but the bottom line was, no speed whatsoever. Ross Brawn admitted that the Honda isn't well suited to Fiji - I guess that's another thing to put on his "to do" list for '09! As it was, Jenson kept going and managed to cruise his was to 14th. Given that he started P18 maybe I shouldn't complain too much. As it is, Honda have been focussing on '09 for a while but results like this sum up Jenson's '08.
As for Lewis, well he effectively got mugged at the start and wound up going off track as he was trying to take the lead. That pushed Lewis down into 6th which meant that his next order of business was to track down Massa. Well he tracked down his rival...and Massa ran into him! Cue pitstop and by that point Lewis was right at the back of the grid. Add in a drive through for an incident involving Raikonen at the start line. Well that put him down to the back of the field and credit where credit's due he did work his way up from there. His car wasn't in the best of shape due to the earlier damage though and he was unable to get back into the points, settling for 12th.
Up front the race effectively turned into a duel between Kubica and Alonso. The Polish diver led the way in the early stages but Alonso stayed out longer and therefore managed to get ahead of the BMW man during the pitstop exchange. In the meantime a variety of drivers took the lead(including Bordais) but when the dust settled Alonso proved to be uncatchable and went on to win his second Grand Prix in a row, making Renault wonder where this recent run of form came from. Behind him Kubica settled for 2nd to still keep himself in with a chance of the championship, Raikonen 3rd and further down, Massa sneaked into the points by picking up 7th.
Well despite that Lewis still leads the world championship with 84 points but his lead has been cut to five points. Further down, DC remains in 16th with 8 points and even further down Jenson remains in 18th with 3 points.
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