Lewis Hamilton had what looked to be the race in Japan sown up with a fantastic pole position from the qualifiers, but sadly this wasn’t to be. He finished outside the points in 12th place as he didn’t recover from a collision with Felipe Massa in the early stages of the race.
Unsurprisingly for the two in front, this meant that another driver took advantage of the difficult conditions and made what looked to be reasonably easy work of it. That driver was Fernando Alonso, who roared to success – as he did in Singapore.
Massa (Hamilton’s arch rival in this year’s F1 season) managed to take 8th place but was later promoted to seventh after Sebastien Bourdais received a penalty for another collision. Once again, Japan proved to be an extremely exciting race, if rather a let-down for the young British driver.
Perhaps, and I’ll just say perhaps at the moment, there is evidence of yet more controversy here. Ferrari’s Massa managed to collide with both Hamilton and Bourdais. In the first instance, both drivers received a penalty (Hamilton’s penalty was for crashing into Raikkonen). In the second, Bourdais was the driver who was punished.
What do you say here? I know some say that it’s business as usual – skipping Ferrari when they are clearly due more punishment for driver actions. Others still would say that were it a certain Lewis Hamilton then another penalty would have been imposed…
Ultimately though, what it means for the drivers is that Massa gained only one point – so he’s still 5 points behind Lewis. This situation pushes Ferrari to the top of the Constructor standings, with two Grand Prix races to go – Shanghai and Sao Paulo.
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