2006 Japanese GP: Facts & Stats

The latest (and possibly decisive) twist in this topsy-turvy world championship saw Fernando Alonso take a Japanese Grand Prix victory nobody would have realistically predicted prior to the race.

Alonso's win puts him 10 championship points ahead of Michael Schumacher, meaning the Spaniard simply needs a top eight finish in Brazil to ensure that he becomes the eighth driver in history to record back-to-back title successes - joining the illustrious list of Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jack Brabham, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen. Alonso scored the 15th win of his career, but the first since the Canadian Grand Prix back in June.

If he didn't look too guilty about capitalizing on Schumacher's misfortune, he had good reason - Alonso lost a probable race win in Hungary because of a mechanical failure, and he somehow let a win slip through his fingers in Shanghai last weekend, despite being the fastest man on the race track for 26 of the 56 laps - compared to just 6 for his German rival.

Ferrari haven't lost an engine in a race since Rubens Barrichello's failure at the 2002 Malaysian Grand Prix, while Schumacher himself hadn't had a race blow-up since the 2000 French Grand Prix, a run of 112 starts.

Felipe Massa scored a consolation second place, limiting the damage in the constructors' championship, as Ferrari are now nine points down with one race left. This was the first time that Massa has scored a podium without Schumacher being up there too.

The whole weekend was one of unfulfilled promise for Schumacher, as he failed to take pole despite his best qualifying time being 0.645 seconds clear of anybody else, while also being comfortably quickest in the speed trap. A pole would have been his ninth at Suzuka, creating an all-time record for poles at a single circuit, surpassing Ayrton Senna's eight at Imola from 1985 to 1994.

As it turned out, Massa pipped his teammate to pole by 0.112 seconds in the final period, as the Brazilian headed a rare Bridgestone 1-2-3-4 on the grid. When Michelin returned to F1 at the beginning of 2001, Bridgestone cars filled the first four places in qualifying four times in the first 11 races, but it hadn't happened again in the 92 races since then.

Third and fourth were taken by the Toyota duo, seven days after they could only manage 16th and 17th in qualifying at Shanghai. Ironically, it was the first time both of the team's cars had made it into the top four since Suzuka back in 2003. Although they couldn't hold those lofty positions through the race, this was the first time all season that both Toyotas scored points in the same Grand Prix. For Jarno Trulli, it was his 50th points finish, in his 163rd GP start.

Compatriot Giancarlo Fisichella had a rather anonymous run to third place, but it was highly emotional in the aftermath of a death of a close friend before the weekend. It is the second time this year that Fisichella has been hit by bereavement, as he previously dedicated his pole position at Sepang to a friend that lost his life beforehand.

Honda's Jenson Button scored a steady fourth at the team's home track (sparing their blushes by beating Toyota). He's now scored 34 points in last six races, second only to Schumacher.

Meanwhile, Kimi Raikkonen salvaged a fifth place from a weekend in which neither McLaren made the top 10 on the grid for the first time in 2006. He was probably glad to just avoid being the first retirement, something that has befallen him three times this year, as well as going out on lap 2 in Turkey. Teammate Pedro de la Rosa was a forgettable 11th, in what may prove to be his last race for the team.

Kimi Raikkonen, McLaren Mercedes © LAT

It says something for Robert Kubica's incredible start to his F1 career that 12th in qualifying is currently his worst ever qualifying performance. Although he was beaten to the final point by Nick Heidfeld in the race, he sent out a message by finishing less than a second behind the German, and setting a fastest lap more than a full second quicker than Heidfeld, good enough for sixth quickest overall.

After a promising qualifying performance, Nico Rosberg will have been frustrated to end the race in tenth, exactly where he started. However, Rubens Barrichello would have settled for that outcome, as he collided with Nick Heidfeld at the start. The 2003 race winner would eventually finish 12th.

Last year, the Red Bull cars lined up fourth and sixth on the grid at Suzuka. A sign of their huge drop-off in form in 2006 was seen in qualifying on Saturday, when both Robert Doornbos and David Coulthard were eliminated in the first period - unlike Tonio Liuzzi, who is effectively driving last year's Red Bull chassis under the Toro Rosso name.

Doornbos was able to spare the team's blushes by beating Liuzzi in the race, although the Italian did himself no favours by spinning away his advantage early on. After a sequence of mechanical problems early in the year, this was Coulthard's first retirement since the Nurburgring, 12 races ago. The Scotsman started his 210th Grand Prix on Sunday, tying Gerhard Berger for fourth in the all-time list.

There was plenty of support for Aguri Suzuki's team in the stands throughout the Suzuka weekend, and prior to the race, Suzuki demonstrated the Lola-Lamborghini in which he became the first Japanese driver to score an F1 podium, on the very same circuit, in 1990. In the race itself, the team were able to reward the fans by getting both their cars home for only the fourth time in 2006.