SO, IT is now all officially over. Sebastian Vettel is world champion and becomes only the ninth driver in history to become a back-to-back title winner. It’s a prestigious list he joins, with the likes of Fangio, Schumacher, Senna, Prost and Alonso among those to have achieved an incredible feat. The emotion on his face when the BBC played back the wonderful montage of back-to-back champions was genuine and he is such a nice bloke too. Sometimes in Formula One, you have to appreciate greatness rather than moan about domination. Vettel totally deserves the title this season; he has been in a class of his own. I will be doing a special blog about the back-to-back champion at a later date.
However, Sebastian had to share the honours on Sunday with Jenson Button, who drove flawlessly again to record his first dry win in a McLaren. His win was another example of stunning driving and he has totally proved those critics, including myself, who said he made a severe error of judgement in leaving Brawn GP for McLaren in 2009. Button is now the defunct no.1 at McLaren and I hope he hangs onto second place in the championship. Again, this win means a lot for Button – with his Japanese girlfriend, Jessica at his side, plus the seven seasons he spent driving for BAR/Honda. He has a close affinity with Japan and is effectively a second home race. Jenson is driving out of his skin at the moment and has the ability now to go on and potentially win a second championship.
The talking point of the race was Vettel’s move on Button at the start of the race. Having been pipped by 0.009secs in qualifying, Button was keen to get the lead from the start. He made a slightly better start, but Sebastian gradually squeezed him out of space. He left Button with a rather brutal choice; back off or risk a crash and sensibly, Jenson chose the former. However, I’ve seen far worse moves at the start of the race and gone unpunished. It deserved a closer look with the race stewards, but no more action was taken thankfully. At last, a decision I agree with this season from the stewards, who sadly have gone back to the inconsistency of 2008.
As Button continues to blossom, Lewis Hamilton continues to look like a lonely, depressed soul and he has a lot of soul-searching to do over the winter. Whilst his team-mate has finished on the rostrum in the last five races, Hamilton has managed just four rostrums in 15 races; a sobering statistic for a driver of the highest calibre. He finished an uneventful fifth at Suzuka and his race also included another run-in with Felipe Massa, AGAIN! This time, it was a minor clash, which saw Massa come off worse on this occasion. This time, Felipe attempted to make the most of it and Hamilton is completely blameless. However, I do find it hard to believe him complaining about vision in his mirrors being impaired. Come on Lewis, this isn’t the third race of the season, it’s the 15th. It is an issue that should have been dealt with by Shanghai at the latest, not at this late stage of the campaign. These are the sort of issues that Sam Michael will need to address with his arrival next season.
Having only scored four points in the last six races, Renault arrived in Japan under some sustained pressure from an ever-improving Force India outfit. Vitaly Petrov stemmed their charge, with a fighting performance to ninth in Japan. Bruno Senna wasn’t helped when he clipped Petrov in a scramble on the exit of turn two during the first lap. With plenty of front downforce missing, his race was severely compromised. It was interesting to see GP2 champion Romain Grosjean sitting on the pitwall, looking like a spare part. Senna has done a good job in the four races he has competed so far for Renault, but Grosjean deserves a shot before the season’s conclusion, especially as there are continuing doubts about Robert Kubica’s pending return. Renault’s strategy on tyres was dreadful; so it made Petrov’s drive even more impressive. Fifth place now looks as good as secure for the team, who will want significant improvements next season.
Force India now has some fresh investment in the team, from a major Indian company. The future looks very rosy now for the Silverstone based outfit, but they will have to be disappointed with their Suzuka showing. Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta both missed out on points, finishing 11th and 12th respectively. Sutil produced the move of the race; on Sauber’s Kamur Kobayashi, which showed a lot of courage and bravery in 130R. However, they struggled with tyre troubles like Renault and the timing of an unnecessary Safety Car severely hurt their hopes of a double points finishes. Paul di Resta’s performance was quite admirable, considering as he looked awful all weekend, suffering from a flu bug.
Also suffering from being under weather was Sergio Perez. The Mexican looked incredibly pale when speaking to BBC’s David Coulthard on Saturday morning, he might have keeled over. His non-show in Q2 gave me the thought that he might not participate in the race. However, the Mexican surprised me, his team and probably himself with a fighting drive to eighth place, his first points since the seventh place result he achieved at Silverstone back in July. His four points move Sauber, who’ve had a rocky mid-season, back onto Force India’s coattails. Although Perez’s form has fluctuated over the course of the season, especially since that Monaco crash in May, he has produced enough to hint that he is Ferrari material in the long-term. Kamur Kobayashi had a poor race and finished down in 13th place, but qualified well and was supported stoutly by his home crowd. Kobayashi has done so much to promote his country in the wake of the dreadful tsunami to have hit the country earlier this year and it was a shame he couldn’t bring his car home for points on Sunday.
Having predicted that Toro Rosso might finish sixth in the constructors championship two races ago, it looks like I put a dark curse on the team. They have failed to perform in the last two events and now look unlikely to improve on eighth in the championship. Their cause will not be helped by their mechanics failing to tighten up their wheels in pitstops. Jaime Alguesuari suffered in China from this and the same fates befall Sebastian Buemi at the weekend. Had he not had this issue, Buemi might have been right in the mix for points when the chequered flag came out after 53 gruelling laps.
There is no doubt who was Driver of the Weekend and that was Jenson Button. Fastest in every single session over the weekend, except the crucial Q3 session, he looked like he had a mission to accomplish over the three days in Suzuka and he achieved in with consummate ease. However, Sergio Perez is my surprise nomination for Driver of the Day. Considering that he looked barely 50 per cent fit, his performance on such a physical driver’s circuit such as Suzuka was very impressive.
Although the constructor’s championship isn’t quite wrapped up, we can now go racing for fun in the final four races of the season. Hopefully, F1 2011 can finish on a high and there are still plenty of questions to be asked. Can Lewis Hamilton recapture his form? Will Mercedes GP score a podium by the season’s end? Has Mark Webber got the luck to win a Grand Prix this season? However, we must salute Sebastian Vettel, a true modern racing legend.
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