Today has been an interesting day in Japan where once more fire seems to have been the order of the day - fortunately for the people at Red Bull it wasn't the Australian's car that was being torched for the third weekend in a row... well at least this far. Also we saw something virtually unheard of, something so rare and unusual I almost dropped my toastie... technical difficulties on a Red Bull that wasn't driven by Webber... not that it curtailed the pace or opened up the potential for a more competitive championship but it's the best we can hope for this season. At the other end of the field we had another surprise in a session which for the first ever time I can remember we've had a drive through penalty issued in a qualifying event... On the surface that seems mental, but when you examine the actual logic behind the decision it actually makes sense, because adding a grid penalty would be definition of futility - just like Pic and Bianchi's grid penalties from Korea. The grid itself will look a little different to the order from qualifying as Sutil also has a penalty - but a technical one for a gearbox change - so it won't appear in the championship standings. Rosberg was also reprimanded in practice, and Hulkenberg drew a fine for Sauber... this does only leave one more German left to encounter difficulties and there is only the most important session of the weekend for Vettel to find these difficulties tomorrow.
Qualifying
It was a windy afternoon in Japan, none of this wind came with any rain once again - I'm starting to think that outside of this little island and the storms presently going on in India, rain is merely a fictional concept. But the wind resulted in increased grip through the first sector which is one the higher downforce dependant sectors of the lap. Not that we need anything that gives the German Bloke any more speed...
Q1 - The session opened with Esteban Gutierrez taking to the track for Sauber and for a while Gutierrez pottered around all by himself - which meant by default he was on an initial pole position. Button took that place off the Mexican and this is the first time in a long time McLaren have lead anything. Meanwhile Esteban returned to the garage and his Sauber promptly caught fire in the garage - it was only brief fire but enough to set their program back a bit. The main contenders felt fairly safe towards the front of the timesheets without needing to use the softer tyres to secure a place in Q2... that was until Bottas went out on a set of the softer tyres and put the car in the top 6. So here was a car that is conventionally well off the pace running faster than the likes of Massa, Raikkonen and Rosberg just because of the tyre compound. As a result fewer drivers felt quite so safe - only the top five felt completely secure. Everyone else came in to fit the softer tyres.
It seemed like a simple final series of runs just to confirm who would be joining the bottom two teams in relegation... But plans never quite go to plan, just as everyone was about to start those final runs there was a minor problem with the Toro Rosso of Jean Eric Vergne. It was more fire, JEV's rear brakes had locked causing them to ignite, so we had another burning Red Bull based car - but Vergne was able to find some marshals who extinguished the fires easily. However a red flag was flown to cover the clean up operation forcing those on track to abandon their efforts. This left enough time for a single lap at the very end of the session - a train of cars lined up in the pit-lane waiting for the green light lead by Rosberg. At the restart it was a competition to find some clean air to complete a lap - Raikkonen passed Gutierrez round the outside of the dunlop curve to gain track position while others backed up at the chicane.
Positions changed rapidly, as each car crossed the line it made ground, drivers moving from the relegation zone up into the top three - Massa being one of the last cars to complete a lap jumped from 17th to 3rd. In the end it was Adrian Sutil who fell the wrong side of the line and joined Vergne in relegation. But the surprise of the session was that Chilton beat the all of the bottom division drivers before their penalties had been applied from Korea, and the first time Marussia had beaten Caterham in a long time.
Q2 - The second part of qualifying was a lot more orderly, started by Di Resta who remarkable had not been complaining or blaming anyone this far, setting the first time of the session. But it was the Lotus team who took that position away Raikkonen heading Grosjean by mere hundredths of a second - the sort of team consistency reminiscent of the Renault Squadron days. We also learned this weekend that Grosjean does Judo... so after he's driven into you on track he could then beat you up afterwards. The sharp end of the grid started to look very interesting as Alonso joined the battle with a very similar time, and then Jenson Button in the McLaren put his car into the mix as well. For a brief moment of time it seemed like there might be some form of legitimate battle for the top spots on the grid.
There is one small problem with that equation, and that there was no Red Bull, because Vettel and Webber had only just started their laps - and as the German Bloke crossed the line all hope of competition vanished as Sebastian was over half a second ahead of everyone else. Webber a little later was two tenths slower but still in a comfortable second place. As the session continued, that gap to the Red Bulls started to come down, Grosjean came within three tenths of the lead but Vettel remained undefeated. But at the end of the session the battle to avoid relegation got very tight - Perez and Di Resta were 0.003s seconds apart, the same distance Perez was ahead of Button in Korea. But neither of them made it through as Massa and Hulkenberg sneaked through to secure promotion.
Q1 - It was rather odd to see Sebastian Vettel take to the track first in the final session of the day - but that surprise was added to when there as a radio call to say his KERs had failed, something that only ever seems to affect Webber's car. But of the first four cars that set times Vettel was still the fastest which is disturbingly ominous... until Webber crossed the line to knock several tenths off his team-mate to take a provisional pole position. Alonso and Button completed the opening runs in third and fourth position.
After a small interlude for a change of tyres it was Raikkonen who started the second runs off in the Lotus gradually followed by the rest of the field where Hamilton and Webber would be the last two cars to cross the line. But the immediate attention was on Vettel and as his initial sector times were good enough for pole, however the lack of KERs slowed the German in the final sector down the straight towards 130R and he couldn't beat Webber. Just to add insult to injury Webber went even faster... even if it was by 0.06s, Hamilton beat Grosjean to third place - and Felipe Massa was considerably faster than Alonso to line up 5th. Rosberg finished 6th ahead of another impressive drive from Hulkenberg. Fernando eventually ended up 8th ahead of Raikkonen and Button completing the top ten.
The Bonus Points Championship points winners
From this morning's session here are the winners:
- 10pts - Max Chilton - For not being useless and beating the all lower teams drivers on pace
- 8pts - Mark Webber - For beating Vettel, it's about time that happened
- 6pts - Felip Massa - For beating Alonso by several positions
- 5pts - Romain Grosjean - Almost third again, and for judo skills on DC on the track walk
- 4pts - Nico Hulkenberg - Back in the top ten for Sauber
- 3pts - Kimi Raikkonen - Passing Gutierrez on the outside of dunlop into the first degner corner
- 2pts - Valtteri Bottas - For setting off the move onto softer tyres in Q1
- 1pt - The stewards - For making a reasonable decision for once.
The Penalties Championship
Even if this is only qualifying there have been some infractions penalised thus far:
- Williams - 60,000 EUR fine for not fixing Maldonado's wheel in FP1 as it fell off and needed collecting by the marshals
- Sauber - 20,000 EUR fine for not informing Hulkenberg over the position of cars around him in FP3
- Charles Pic - Drive through penalty to be taken within the first five laps of the race - because a grid penalty at the bottom of the grid would have been pointless.
Looking to Tomorrow
The Japanese GP is always one of the season's highlights on one of the greatest tracks the championship visits where anything can happen, because the proliferation of gravel traps and close proxomity of the barriers attracts the possibility of a safety car. The grid has several cars out of position - Raikkonen and Alonso towards the bottom of the top ten, and Sutil dropped places for technical reasons towards the back of the grid. But there is one prominent point of interest for the race tomorrow and that is the dynamic between Vettel and Webber in that fight for the lead will be brilliant, the two have not been the best of friends this year or many of the previous years. But this is the first race when the positions have been reversed since Malaysia and that sparked all manner of fallout - so if ever there was a time and place for revenge this is it. Webber has been a fan of the traditional circuits and hopefully there might be a new face on the top step of the podium in Japan.
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