Round 15: Japan 2013 - Preview

Greetings Internet,

Well this post comes to the internet a day later than formerly advertised, just another thing to add to the list of things that have been forgotten over the past week or so. We enter now the closing stages of the season, a season which started off so competitively in the first few races, when different people were allowed to win races and it was possible for the rest of the field to see the lead car. Those days may be long gone as changes in tyre compound and development pace has unleashed some recent domination by a certain German bloke... something tells me we've been down this road before... Nevertheless we move on race by race observing the growing battles a country mile from the top positions. For example none of the rookie drivers have scored a point this season - admittedly most of them do drive for the two slowest teams which would need several miracles at once to get near the points. But two of them do not - Bottas is at effectively the third slowest team on the grid, where if it wasn't for Rosberg retiring in Hungary Williams would have no points at all. Then there is Gutierrez, the only one who looks like scoring a point, because Sauber have capitalised on the tyre changes that punished Force India and Marussia. Presently Hulkenberg has scored all 31 of Saubers points - single handedly chasing down Toro Rosso and Force India - so the car has enough pace to find the first rookie point of 2013

There are only a few races left for these battles to sort themselves out - most importantly the challenge for the ultimate prize of being the 2013 bonus point champion. An accolade which to this day none of the former winners have bothered to acknowledge. Which is a factor of two things - A)  the number of tweets the drivers receive at the end of a season anyway, and B) this is a tiny part of the internet with no form of influence or importance and therefore is of little consequence.  But that is another rant for another day, for now there is a race weekend to sort out... which probably will end in the same result, unless of course rain gets involved... And what do you know - talk of more storms has been mentioned. As this is now the fifth race in succession with this 'threat' a dry race is more than guaranteed again, probably even scheduled for the hottest days of the week to coincide with race time. FP1 and FP2 have already been completely drenched in solar radiation, but even still - it is Suzuka.

The Track

Probably one of the top two venues on the calendar is Suzuka, why on earth they thought it was a good idea to head off to Fuji for a couple of races is anyone's guess... I somehow suspect monetary persuasion was involved. Before we head off to the likes of India, Abu-Dhabi and Austin it's nice to visit a track which holds onto the traditional values of racing - good old fashioned gravel traps are the order of the day here for the most part. Some areas have been replaced with tarmac - but just the corners with the fastest entry speeds (turn 1, Spoon and 130R). Even in those areas the tarmac doesn't run from the edge of the track outwards, because there is a line of astroturf and grass first. This is a brilliant solution to the problems of drivers running wide - firstly the lack of grip in the first five metres or so of run-off dissuades drivers from using it to gain an advantage. While the remainder of the space allows folk to comeback after a high speed spin without rolling the car into oblivion.

The layout itself has everything you'd want from a circuit, high speed corners, flowing undulating sections, overtaking opportunities and the risk of putting it into the barriers, like several have done so far this weekend in practice. Sector one is a firm drivers favourite, featuring one of the only decreasing radius corners that works follows by an ever tightening sequence of s-bends before reaching the long and narrow dunlop corner at the top of the hill. On the way back down are two of Blog HQ's favourite corners -  the two Degners. The first part is very quick on entry with no room for error, because as soon as you go off the track turns away from you in degner 2 and the next stop is the fence.

After the crossover point the track reaches the slowest corner - named here as Kobayashi Corner for the spate of overtaking manoeuvres in 2011 and some more in 2012. Sadly Kamui is not on the grid this season but the corner name will remain until someone else can out-do that performance. Coming out of Kobayashi Corner is a long gentle and also rather narrow corner towards spoon - one of the only other decreasing radius corners that works. Spoon leads onto the back straight before 130R, the fastest corner on the track where memorably Jerome D'Ambrosio crashed on the lap to the grid... The lap finishes with the Casio Triangle Chicane - one of the primary overtaking places on the lap... despite being seemingly clumsy, the chicane works. Perhaps because it's been there for ever and we've all gotten used to it. Or maybe its because it's Suzuka and it doesn't spoil the track. It's all downhill from here... until Interlagos.

The Form Guide

Well because of my lack of punctuality this weekend, I've seen the FP1 and 2 results so the expectations are for once supported by some form of evidence rather than meaningless guesses, but early practice can't really be an indicator of true performance. However there is one assumption that can be made even without staring at the timing screens and videos from the early hours of the morning and that is there will be a German Bloke somewhere near the front. This time he may not be alone - Suzuka is a very traditional circuit and Webber quite likes this sort of event so that intra-team divide on the score sheet might not be as wide as it has been in previous races. Also Mercedes look strong again - not quite strong enough to beat Red Bull, but enough to stay ahead of Ferrari, Lotus and McLaren. It doesn't look quite so rosy for Ferrari, Alonso was sideways more often than not in FP2 - spinning the car between the degners - the championship challenge has been slowly worn away from the Spaniard and this is the first weekend all hope can be extinguished. So that would explain the extra urgency but the car doesn't have the pace to stop Vettel from winning... no-one's car really does.

Like it has been in the past two races Sauber are the class of the mid-field, challenging McLaren for top ten placings. McLaren had already escaped the threat from Force India as their pace dropped off, only to find Hulkenberg leading a charge in a revitalised team with masses more performance than they had at the beginning of the season. Toro Rosso are the closest challengers mainly with Ricciardo as Vergne has fallen back a little after Red Bull ignored him for Webber's seat... but he does need to be careful... any further back and he could get fired. Toro Rosso does like firing talented drivers, Buemi, Alquersuari and Bourdais come to mind there. Force India and Williams continue to struggle, Maldonado found himself driving around with three wheels in FP1 - which the team received a 60,000 EUR fine. Racing is on higher alert for parts leaving vehicles on track after the cameraman was hit by Webber's wheel and a dozen Indycar fans were injured by debris in Houston.

At the back half of the competitors needn't bother turning up frankly, both Pic and Bianchi have 10-place penalties on the grid, which given the fact that they'll be on the back two rows is utterly pointless. But the penalties were given for receiving three reprimands and those are the rules, those two were probably asked to stay behind in Korea and start the race from there. That leaves Van Der Garde to win the lower division and Chilton gets the honour of not starting on the final row of the grid, which doesn't happen too often, the chap will probably end up with altitude sickness for starting that high up.

Overall this is one of the races unlike Korea that does come with a certain amount of anticipation and a reputation for being great fun, a challenging circuit with little room for error is a perfect recipe for an entertaining event. But unfortunately this weekend will be conducted under somewhat of a sombre note after the news that Marussia test driver Maria De Vilotta was found dead in her hotel in Seville this morning. After losing an eye in testing Maria was famously publicising how she was lucky to be alive and had a new bright outlook after surviving that incident. So this is disturbing news and Blog HQ offers condolences to her family.