Japanese GP Race Analysis

The race proved that any doubts about Michael Schumacher's end-of-season commitment were caused purely by events in America. With his head now back on the job, he was once again in a league of his own. It was a good day too for Juan Pablo Montoya, who took to the tricky Suzuka track like a veteran and left his team mate behind. Another sign of how next year will unfold?



Tyres were not really a major talking point through qualifying, in that all the Michelin and Bridgestone runners chose the softer compounds. What was worth noting was that Michael Schumacher took his superb pole position with just three runs, saving himself a set of tyres.

Having also been frugal in the morning untimed session, he thus had three new sets left for the race - the perfect scenario for a two-stop race. None of the other Bridgestone runners could say the same, although team mate Rubens Barrichello had a useful two sets.

As is the norm the Michelin runners put a major emphasis on scrubbing tyres, and unusually slow times by the Williams pair in the warm-up indicated that the team had left some of its homework to Sunday morning.



With two stops considered usual at Suzuka, no one was expecting to see any clever tricks. Everything thus rested on the start and of course how late or early that first stop would come. Michael went straight into the lead, but in the early laps Rubens was the man everyone was watching. He dived past Ralf Schumacher in brilliant style on the first lap, and the did the same to Juan Pablo Montoya shortly afterwards, although the Colombian got a better run out of the chicane and was immediately back in front.

This was great stuff, but it later emerged there was a reason behind it. Ferrari had stuck Rubens on a risky three-stop strategy in an attempt to get him to the front of the field. So he had to be aggressive, and he had the tools for the job. New rubber and a lighter load certainly gave him an advantage over the Williams duo in the early laps, but in failing to get past Montoya decisively, the game plan was blown.

The idea was to get him up to second, whereupon Michael would wave him past. Presumably the World Champion would then have slackened his pace, held everyone else up, and given Rubens the chance to get away and make his first pit stop without losing the lead. Michael knew his role: "The plan was that he gets by the two Williams and then once he's by them then obviously I would have let him by and let him do his own race."

It brought back memories of some of the games the team played in the Eddie Irvine era. It perhaps seems a little over the top to use those tactics in attempt to earn second place in the championship, although to be fair Rubens certainly deserved a race win and was owed a little help by Michael. But with the Brazilian stuck behind Montoya, it not only all became academic, a frustrated Rubens knew that he wasn't even going to get on the podium.



Not that Barrichello's problems were any great concern to Michael. He was running his own race, pending the call to slow down and help, which never came. In the opening laps he was phenomenal, new tyres and a clear track allowing him to pull away from Montoya. The Williams man had started on scrubbed tyres that took a little while to come in, and also had his hands full with Rubens. Michael's early sprint deserves further examination:



Lap 1: 3.638s
Lap 2: 6.333s (Barrichello briefly holds second)
Lap 3: 8.269s
Lap 4: 8.902s
Lap 5: 9.708s
Lap 6: 10.142s
Lap 7: 10.755s
Lap 8: 11.567s

This was impressive progress by any standards, but the gap then began to level out as Montoya's tyres came in. Michael then pitted on lap 18 and, in a rare miscalculation by the team, came out right behind Mika Hakkinen. In this last race before his sabbatical the Finn was only too pleased to have a chance to play with his old rival, and held him off for some five laps before making his own stop. During that period Michael was not able to use his new tyres properly and lost well over a second a lap, but there was nothing he could do about it unless he tried a risky passing move... but it wasn't really worth it.



For a brief period Ross Brawn was slightly concerned that the early gap indicated that Williams had something up its collective sleeve: "That made us think that they were on one stop. We got such a big lead so quickly, so then I got a bit anxious, because if they were on one stop, it was looking a bit difficult. We didn't want to have a repeat of the USA, where we lost it in the middle of the race." Michael shared his concerns: "I was wondering if they were on a one-stop."

Any doubts were removed when Montoya pitted for the first time on lap 21. Thanks in part to Hakkinen, the gap between Michael and Montoya had shrunk from 11.1s to 6.3s over the pit stop sequence. This appeared to give Juan Pablo a second chance, but again on scrubbed tyres he couldn't get the best out of the car in the opening laps of his middle stint.

The gap dropped as low as 5.2s on lap 30, but was up to 6.4s again when Michael made his second stop on lap 36. And incredibly, once again he came out behind Hakkinen! For two more laps Mika teased his former sparring partner before making his own second stop, and again Michael lost time.

After Montoya's stop the gap was back down to 5.0s, but for a third time Michael was quicker on his still new tyres than Montoya was on his final scrubbed set. "When his tyres were old and my tyres were in good shape, we were the same or quicker than him," noted the Colombian.



Over the final dozen laps the gap fluctuated between 6.2s and 4.5s, before Michael backed off on his final lap and allowed it down to 3.1s at the flag. He was clearly in charge, but this was nevertheless a good showing from Juan Pablo.

"I don't know what Montoya was doing," said Brawn, "but we were able to run a pace, we didn't have to push to the maximum."

The McLarens were never in the fight, and were rarely more than a few seconds apart. Mika had a couple of trips over the chicane, and with five laps to go decided to wave Coulthard through. This was a bit of an odd decision, for it deprived him of the opportunity to stand on the podium for what could be the final time. He implied that it was pay back time for Australia 1998, but DC can hardly regard it as a fair swap.

Once can only assume that in Mika's mind this was his last chance to say thank you, and it was better than nothing. He also said, only half-jokingly, that he no longer wanted to "... go into the high speed corners in seventh gear, flat out, so I lifted a bit!" He certainly took it easy over those closing laps.



So what then of Barrichello and his three stop strategy? He eventually finished fifth, and the 35s gap to his team mate showed just what the gamble had cost him. He wasn't helped by a glitch at his stop that allowed Ralf to get back ahead.

He did at least have some fun, for his battle with the Williams man eventually forced the German into a mistake that led to a stop and go, after he set his quickest third sector time on a lap that the Williams jumped the chicane. That led to a stop and go that effectively put Schumacher Jr onto a three stop schedule, albeit without the fuel load and tyre benefits, and thus gave Rubens someone to fight with.

Afterwards Brawn seemed almost embarrassed by gamble with Rubens:

"There was nothing to lose really. If he'd got past Montoya it might have worked, and of course we could have let him past Michael and it could have been different. But only a win was going to be good enough for Rubens, so we thought we'd take a chance, and it almost worked. It all got messy after that. He wasn't able to use the tyres at the right time. He got stuck behind cars when our tyres were good and their tyres were not so good. So the whole thing fell apart after that. It was one of those situations where there was nothing to lose, because Rubens had to win the race today. We gave him an opportunity to do that, and it didn't quite come off."

"Why Ferrari did a three-stop strategy, I don't know," joked Patrick Head. "There's no numbers that we can put into our computer that come up and say you can ever attempt to do that here. But it's like most things in life, you have to be judged on average performance, and on strategy on average they have been fairly good..."

Overall it was a pretty average performance by Ralf. He claims to love Suzuka and knows it well after his spell in Formula Nippon in 1996, but his record is decidedly ordinary there in F1, and now comprises just a fifth and a sixth. Last year he was outpaced in qualifying by rookie Jenson Button, and Suzuka newcomer Montoya left him behind this year. Very strange.

To sum up, here's how the leading guys spread out their stops:



Michael: 18-18-17
Montoya: 21-17-15
Coulthard: 23-16-14
Hakkinen: 24-14-15
Barrichello: 15-14-12-12
Ralf: 23-6*-10-14 (* penalty stop)



There was some fun and games behind. Benetton had a good, solid run (perhaps no surprise on a track that is similar to Spa, where Giancarlo Fisichella shone), but once again Jaguar and Eddie Irvine got their sums right and appeared to winning the 'best of the rest' battle. Good tyre preparation and a latish pit stop looked set to jump him up to seventh, only for a frustrating power failure in the garage to nobble his pit stop. Seventh wouldn't have been much to shout about, but that's all that Jaguar, Benetton, BAR, Jordan and the rest had to aim for.

Here's a sobering thought. Following the European GP, Suzuka was only the second time this year that the points paying places were filled by the six cars from the top three teams. On only one other occasion in 2001 have all six members of this elite group made the finish, when Montoya was eighth in Hungary. That intriguing statistic serves to remind us that for the rest, points gathering has largely relied upon retirements ahead...