2012 Japanese GP Executive Summary

Nobody likes a race won because of an obvious technical advantage and Sebastian Vettel may have been aware of this when, despite his team's calls for him to sandbag and/or save the car, he pushed to get fast lap of the race on the penultimate lap.

Pole,  a win leading every lap and fast lap of the race is beyond a hat trick, it is the demonstration of Red Bull's hunger and Adrian Newey's genius,  finding a half second over the field like that at this point in the season is remarkable, add a driver that when ahead makes no mistakes and it's unbeatable.

Vettel is now a mere 4 points from Alonso who ran into a whole lot of Raikkonen issues at Suzuka, Kimi's spin in qualifying compromised his one hot lap and Kimi's front wing cut his tire at the start. Game over for Fernando who score no points once again through no fault of his own or Ferrari.

That's racing but if Kimi suffered no effects from his first corner indiscretion not so his team mate Grosjean who got nailed with yet another type of penally, a 10 second stop and go...I can't remember the last time I saw one of those in F1. His under the microscope but I'm not sure he deserved all of it, Webber had one of his trademark shit stats and was not exactly flying through the decreasing radius turn 2. Grosjean was in maybe too busy looking at Perez on the outside. In any case, it's him again making contact so there was no way in hell he was going to get away with it.

It's possible that today we caught a glint of what Ferrari might know about Checo Perez, he certainly was "put in his place" by Raikkonen and made a pretty silly mistake when he spun off. I still like him very much as a driver though and his first move on Lewis was a slap in the face at the guy who considers (and is considered by many) as the best braker in F1.

Hamilton was pretty much a ghost and the impression one gets is that of much sour grapes in that garage. Mclaren is in a bind, there are doubts Button is the kind of driver who can really push a team and Perez is an unknown in that situation.

Button, with a car that up until the previous race had been the fastest, could do little about Kobayashi who had a fantastic race except for the restart when he seemed to fall asleep. Don't these guys watch any American racing? Only Vettel I guess.

Button could also do little about Massa who finally was able to get a good result after two years. Massa was faster than Fernando all week end except for the one crucial lap in Q2 on Saturday. It must leave a more bitter taste in Alonso's mouth to know he had a car good enough for second. But pointless to look back, Ferrari's goose is as good as cooked unless they react as strongly as Red Bull has and that takes more than just money and effort, that takes genius, evil or otherwise. That or luck and Alonso's may have run out of his allotment this year.

Kamui Kobayashi and Felipe Massa by Paul-Henry Cahier

PROVISIONAL RACE RESULTS

The Japanese Grand Prix
Suzuka, Japan;
53 laps; 307.471km;
Weather: Sunny.

Classified:

Pos  Driver        Team                       Time
 1.  Vettel        Red Bull-Renault           1h28:56.242
 2.  Massa         Ferrari                    +    20.639
 3.  Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari             +    24.538
 4.  Button        McLaren-Mercedes           +    25.098
 5.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes           +    46.490
 6.  Raikkonen     Lotus-Renault              +    50.424
 7.  Hulkenberg    Force India-Mercedes       +    51.159
 8.  Maldonado     Williams-Renault           +    52.364
 9.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault           +    54.675
10.  Ricciardo     Toro Rosso-Ferrari         +  1:06.919
11.  Schumacher    Mercedes                   +  1:07.769
12.  Di Resta      Force India-Mercedes       +  1:23.460
13.  Vergne        Toro Rosso-Ferrari         +  1:28.645
14.  Senna         Williams-Renault           +  1:28.709
15.  Kovalainen    Caterham-Renault           +     1 lap
16.  Glock         Marussia-Cosworth          +     1 lap
17.  Petrov        Caterham-Renault           +     1 lap
18.  De la Rosa    HRT-Cosworth               +     1 lap
19.  Grosjean      Lotus-Renault              +    2 laps

Fastest lap: Vettel, 1:35.774

Not classified/retirements:

Driver        Team                         On lap
Pic           Marussia-Cosworth            39
Karthikeyan   HRT-Cosworth                 34
Perez         Sauber-Ferrari               19
Alonso        Ferrari                      1
Rosberg       Mercedes                     1


World Championship standings, round 15:                

Drivers:                    Constructors:             
 1.  Alonso       194        1.  Red Bull-Renault          325
 2.  Vettel       190        2.  McLaren-Mercedes          283
 3.  Raikkonen    157        3.  Ferrari                   263
 4.  Hamilton     152        4.  Lotus-Renault             239
 5.  Webber       135        5.  Mercedes                  136
 6.  Button       131        6.  Sauber-Ferrari            115
 7.  Rosberg       93        7.  Force India-Mercedes       81
 8.  Grosjean      82        8.  Williams-Renault           58
 9.  Massa         69        9.  Toro Rosso-Ferrari         15
10.  Perez         65       
11.  Kobayashi     50       
12.  Di Resta      44       
13.  Schumacher    43       
14.  Hulkenberg    37       
15.  Maldonado     33       
16.  Senna         25       
17.  Vergne         8       
18.  Ricciardo      7       
       
All timing unofficial