Patronise F1

The 2008 world championship looked increasingly meaningless as the checkered flag fell in Fuji. For the second race in a row, Fernando Alonso combined some fortuitous circumstances with plenty of quality driving to win and boost his points standings in a championship he has never really been involved with. Meanwhile, our illustrious title contenders had another virtually useless race day, leaving everyone wondering if we really are going to crown anyone like the best driver come the end of the season.

Lewis Hamilton started from pole, but he made a hash of the getaway, conceded the lead to the quicker Kimi Raikkonen, and then swiped across his team mate's bows to challenge the inside line into turn one. An aggressive move, and a meaningless one given that he proceeded to jam his brakes on, slide wide into the first turn and take Kimi and Felipe Massa with him. Amongst all the mess, Robert Kubica, Fernando Alonso and Heikki Kovalainen actually bothered taking the corner and slipped through into the front of the race, with Jarno Trulli just behind them. Meanwhile the slip-sliding at the front bottlenecked the field, and David Coulthard lost out, crashing into the wall heavily and taking Kazuki Nakajima with him.

If Hamilton was guilty of dodgy driving in turn one, Massa matched his gormlessness on the second lap, as Hamilton went to pass him into the chicane, a move which Massa ran deep for, before cutting across the kerbs and turning the McLaren around. Hamilton dropped to the back of the field, and while Massa continued, both drivers picked up drive through penalties for their separate antics.

Raikkonen, who had dropped to 5th after Hamilton's delaying tactics, passed Trulli for 4th and set about latching himself onto the back of the fight at the front. Into the first stops, and Alonso sneaked out ahead of Kubica to take the lead, a decisive move, particularly given that he was fuelled lighter than the Pole, but once he was released, he pulled out a comfortable gap on the BMW, and never looked likely to cede the top spot from that point.

Before those stops though, McLaren's race fell apart. As Hamilton (and Massa) served their penalties, dropping themselves even further down the order than they already were, Heikki Kovalainen was already on his way back to the pits, having pulled off to the side of the track with a broken McLaren. A big blow for the team in their hunt for the constructors championship, as it elevated Raikkonen to third, and for the Finn's hopes of what would have been a welcome podium.

While the penalty squabbles happened in the pits, the Fuji track was providing plenty of action elsewhere in the field. The heavily-fuelled Mark Webber had dropped almost to the back of the order after the opening lap, but he managed to surge past car after car as he bravely hunted a championship point. Meanwhile fellow Patty favourite Nico Rosberg briefly entertained with a couple of scraps with Giancarlo Fisichella and Rubens Barrichello, but it was to prove for little for the German and the Williams team.

As the final stops passed, and Alonso serenely drove clear at the front, the action switched to the fight for second place, as Robert Kubica seemed to have no answer to the charging Raikkonen in his ailing BMW Sauber, but he defended solidly. Lap after lap, Raikkonen tried to pass down into the first corner after easing up on the back of the Pole down the mile-long front straight, and lap after lap Kubica resolutely defended, knowing he needed as good a result as possible to keep his own slim title hopes alive. Nelson Piquet Jr joined the scrap for a brief moment, proving that Renault do now have genuine pace, but a stereotypical Piquet mess up dropped him off the squabbling pair.

As the fight for second normalised, and Hamilton all but gave up as he meandered around in 12th place, Massa at least kept trying in his efforts to wangle a point. He looked to have blown it in his fight with Webber when he lost a hatful of time after colliding with Sebastien Bourdais, who exited the pit lane in his Toro Rosso and tried to hold the inside line on the Ferrari into turn one. Nevertheless, despite emerging from his own final stop behind the Aussie, the long one stop stint had ruined Webber's "green" Bridgestones, and in the end he was a sitting duck for Massa, who grabbed what may turn out to be a decisive point in 8th.

Alonso took the flag and the plaudits then, reminding us all exactly how dominant he could be given the right circumstances (i.e. not an early 2008 vintage Renault), with Kubica holding on to second from Raikkonen and Piquet Jr. Trulli took a quiet 5th for Toyota at their home race, while Bourdais took an impressive 6th (stewards enquiry into his tangle with Massa notwithstanding), ahead of his team mate Vettel and Massa himself. Webber finished just outside the points, with the witless Nick Heidfeld rounding out the top ten.

Elsewhere, Rosberg ended up 11th, ahead of Hamilton, the paceless Honda pair and Nakajima, while Force India suffered a double retirement and Timo Glock had early mechanical issues. Those three cars joined DC and Kovalainen behind the wall by the end of the race.

So, in the end, the third surprising win in a row (perhaps fourth, if you count Massa's somewhat fortunate "win" in Belgium), and another reminder that if you're finding this most witless of title battles hard to stomach, there may at least be better times ahead in 2009.

So long as Alonso gets a decent car from the off, that is.

Update: To paraphrase Harold Wilson, a four hour stifled nap is a long time in Formula One, and since this article was written, the stewards have seen fit to slightly dubiously penalise Sebastien Bourdais for his contact with Massa. The penalty drops Bourdais to 10th, promoting Massa up to 7th and Webber into 8th, and cutting Lewis Hamilton's championship lead to 5 points. So there you go, delete reaction as appropriate: Harsh but fair, we didn't really see a decent angle of the incident to see what Bourdais did / Very harsh on Seabass, and after probably his best drive of the year as well / Oh my god, more fixing from the FIA, I hate this sport that I keep watching for some reason.

* - Bourdais penalised 25 seconds for showing signs of refusing to defer to a frontrunner.

Drivers Championship Standings -
1 Hamilton 84pts, 2 Massa 79pts, 3 Kubica 72pts, 4 Raikkonen 63pts, 5 Heidfeld 56pts, 6 Kovalainen 51pts, 7 Alonso 48pts, 8 Trulli 30pts, 9 Vettel 29pts, 10 Webber 21pts, 11 Glock 20pts, 12 Piquet Jr 18pts, 13 Rosberg 17pts, 14 Barrichello 11pts, 15 Nakajima 9pts, 16 Coulthard 8pts, 17 Bourdais 4pts, 18 Button 3pts.

Constructors Championship Standings -
1 Ferrari 142pts, 2 McLaren-Mercedes 135pts, 3 BMW Sauber 128pts, 4 Renault 66pts, 5 Toyota 50pts, 6 Toro Rosso-Ferrari 34pts, 7 Red Bull-Renault 29pts, 8 Williams-Toyota 26pts, 9 Honda 14pts.