Back in the good ol' days, every race at Fuji started like this:

Today? Not so much.

*SPA IS CALLING, THEY WANT THEIR WEATHER BACK: For only the fourth time in F1 history, the race began behind the safety car. Why?

*DID WE MENTION THE RAIN?: This view from Takuma Sato's cockpit just says it all:

The surprising thing was that there were so few accidents.

*OH, THE RACE! FORGOT ABOUT THAT...: Once the safety car went away, we actually got a pretty decent race, with some heavy implications on the Driver's Championship. Lewis Hamilton was possessed by the spirit of Michael Schumacher and turned in a masterful wet-weather drive, winning by nearly 13 seconds. Fernando Alonso, on the other hand, spun and crashed out of the race around the 2/3rds mark, and now finds himself 12 points behind his teammate with two races to go, a nearly insurmountable gap. Felipe Massa is now out of contention altogether, and Kimi Raikkonen in third is hanging on by the skin of his teeth.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Heikki Koveleaininnie. Renault gambled in qualifying, setting both their cars up for a dry race. The gamble failed miserably, dropping both Heikki and Giancarlo Fisichella way down the grid, and seemingly costing them any shot at a podium. Nevertheless, Heikki, running no rear wing to speak of, and therefore suffering from a tremendous lack of grip, managed to run his Renault up into 2nd place. He then had to fight off his fellow Finnish racer Kimi Raikkonen in the last lap to stay in second. Considering that, by all rights, he should have been off-track a dozen times today, Heikki Koveleaininninininnie gets the DotR.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: Renault. Rain may be the great equalizer, but it also makes a mockery of all the plans and strategies that go into a F1 race. No team looked good today: McLaren had their first DNF, Ferrari peed one right down the leg of their firesuits by starting their cars on completely undriveable Intermediates, RedBull/Toro Rosso managed to go from podium finishes (and a possible win) to wrecking themselves (see the "MOOOO-oove" below)... the list goes on and on. But there was Renault, coming in 2nd and 5th with either an example of marvelous improvisation or incredible good luck, and their best race of the year.

*MOVE OF THE RACE: On the final lap of the race, Felipe Massa was frantically trying to get past Robert Kubica for sixth place. For the last third of the lap, Massa was either alongside, immediately behind, or just a smidge ahead of Kubica, but not past him. Then he basically played a game of chicken with the Pole, getting his tires so close to the BMW that Kubica could have counted the number of tread grooves on the Ferrari's 'full wet' rubbers. Kubica peeled off, then swung back in towards the red car. Massa, who'd spent the majority of the day off-track anyway and probably had a good feel for the asphalt runoff areas, intentionally blew the final turn. Probably screaming "Screw the rain" in Brazillian, he then buried the accelerator and outran Kubica to the finish line. We have no idea how the FIA Stewards won't investigate the racing activities there, but for now, Massa gets the Move of the Race for that startling sequence.

*MOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE: Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel had it all today. Everything was going his way, from becoming the youngest driver in F1 history to lead a lap, to sitting pretty in 3rd place after Alonso pronged his McLaren, bringing out the safety car. Just ahead of him was Mark Webber in his RedBull, the junior team following the Big team. Both would have been the best finishes ever for their respective teams, and Webber had a distinct chance at a win (as Hamilton seemed to be having problems after being bumped earlier in the race). Then it all turned to dust, as somehow Vettel rammed into the rear of Webber's car, destroying the Red Bull's suspension and knocking him out of the race. Vettel's Toro Rosso limped back to the pits with it's front-left tire at a 45-degree angle to the direction of travel. From hero to goat in one second. The last shot we saw of Vettel was of him in the back of the Toro Rosso pits, helmeted head in his hands, his body language suggesting that he wanted to learn more about seppuku, in a hurry.

Honorable mention goes to the SuperAguri mechanic who decided to lean over and manually (i.e., with his fingers) open Takuma Sato's fuel cover after he had just had nearly a full tank put in, thereby causing this:

*DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE: will be posted Sunday afternoon.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:08 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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