Nigel Roebuck: Fifth Column

It struck me on Sunday that if one were looking for a 'driver of the day' in the Japanese Grand Prix there was a strong case for considering Bernd Maylander. Thundering round a water-logged Fuji in that big heavy Merc for lap after lap, with 22 Formula 1 cars in your wake, cannot have been a restful task, but Maylander was well up to it, and performed superbly.

Given the conditions, there was no option but to begin the race behind the safety car, but trailing around in this situation - even in the dry - brings risks of its own, as we have many times seen, for the cars are close together, and the drivers intent on keeping tyres and brakes as warm as possible. Thus, they tend to accelerate in short bursts, then back off, then weave - and not always do they all do it perfectly in sync.

Given that there are heavy penalties for overtaking - even inadvertently - 'under yellow', avoiding doing so often leads to standing on the brakes, which can trigger a chain reaction. At Monza, seven years ago, Michael Schumacher, leading the pack behind the safety car, abruptly slowed on the straight down to Parabolica, and that led to Jenson Button's swerving off the road (and into retirement) to avoid Giancarlo Fisichella.

At Monaco in 2004 it was Michael's turn to suffer. Again he was stabbing at throttle and brake, and in the tunnel came into contact first with Juan Montoya's Williams, then the guardrail.

On Sunday, in similar circumstances, Sebastian Vettel ran into Mark Webber, thus accounting for two of Dietrich Mateschitz's cars, and that was particularly unfortunate, given that prior to that point both men had driven superbly, and were running second and third. In Hungary Lewis Hamilton did not use the 'F' word; in Japan Webber did.

If you think about it, probably it's not too surprising that incidents occur in safety car periods, for the drivers are 'down' from racing pace, and perhaps not concentrating quite as they had been, while at the same time their cars' progress is jerky and unpredictable. Throw in the element of gamesmanship, and there is more than ample scope for disaster.

It wasn't until lap 20 that Maylander brought the Mercedes into the pitlane, allow racing to commence, and what happened next could easily have eliminated both McLarens.

With the longest straight in F1 to come, Hamilton understandably wasn't keen on being slipstreamed by Fernando Alonso, so at the last corner he gave his car a burst of throttle, inviting his rival to do the same, then almost stopped, then got back on the gas, steering for the outside of the corner, giving himself the best line on to the straight, and at the same time blocking Alonso.

Perhaps it was payback time for Spa, where, as we know, Lewis was very wound up about Fernando's no-nonsense line out of La Source.

Whatever, the ploy worked. By the end of the straight Alonso was too far back to think about making a move, and Hamilton - the only driver in the place who could see - was gone. But if it had been a risk worth taking, undeniably a risk it had been, for the McLarens could easily have tangled, and while that would have left Lewis still in the lead of the world championship, Ron Dennis might have found it hard to smile.

There was emphatically a change of tactic in the Hamilton camp in Japan, Lewis suddenly much more overt in his criticism of Alonso. If the smile and the easy manner were still in place, the message was harder-edged by far than we had previously seen, as if making clear that a second year as Alonso's team-mate was not to be countenanced.

As at Montreal and Indianapolis, Fernando looked the likely pole man - until the very end of qualifying, when Lewis nicked it. In both North American races, Hamilton then went on to win the race, and it was the same in Japan, but never will he take a pole more crucial than this. So long as he got away properly, after all, he alone would have clear vision, and at Fuji that was beyond price.

It would not have been a 21st century grand prix meeting, of course, without some sort of controversy, and last weekend Ferrari were notified too late of the e-mail instruction, from the FIA stewards, that all cars must start on 'extreme wet' tyres. As anyone in the paddock will tell you, it is most unusual for Ferrari to be informed 'too late' of anything.

The principle of e-mail correspondence to notify teams of special instructions (such as those which appertained on Sunday) was established last year, the reasoning being that all would receive notification simultaneously, with no time advantage to anyone, but anyone with a computer knows that some e-mails get through quicker than others, and the FIA has announced that, as of now, all e-mail correspondence to the teams will be backed up by written confirmation. Which will take time, one would have thought.

Given that a monsoon was in progress, and that the forecast for the balance of the afternoon was dire, most were mighty surprised that Ferrari had opted to go to the grid with both cars on intermediates. Presumably, their hope was that the safety car would not pull in unless, or until, conditions significantly improved, at which point Raikkonen and Massa would have been in the pound seats.

Even if 'inters' had been allowed, though, it was surely a strange decision to start both cars on them, with no bet- hedging whatever. Back in 1968, at the French Grand Prix at Rouen, the weather was uncertain, and Ferrari started Chris Amon on dry tyres and Jacky Ickx on wets. Once the race started, it began to pour down, and Amon finished 10th - but Ickx won, by two minutes.

Last weekend brought so many echoes from the past. Although Hamilton didn't clinch the world championship on Sunday, he put a lock on it, and inevitably that revived memories of the 1976 race at Fuji, in which James Hunt - another English McLaren driver - beat Niki Lauda to the title.

The conditions were very similar - atrocious - but of course back then the race started conventionally, away from the grid. Lauda, only recently back to racing after his life-threatening accident at the Nurburgring, pulled in after only two laps, saying that the conditions were unacceptable, that his life was worth more than a championship. That being so, Hunt needed only four points to win it, and he duly finished third behind Mario Andretti and Patrick Depailler.

At Adelaide in 1989 the rain was so bad that, after a single lap, Alain Prost came into the pits and parked his McLaren. "Several of us had talked about it - about not racing," Gerhard Berger told me, "because the conditions were impossible. The standing water was terrible, and you just couldn't see anything. We agreed that we'd stop after one lap, but only Alain went through with it - he was the brave guy, not us."

A month or so ago Daniele Audetto, now of Super Aguri but back in 1976 the team manager of Ferrari, told me it had been just that way at Fuji, too. "A lot of the drivers, including Hunt," Audetto said, "agreed to start, to meet the contract, and then stop. Niki did stop, and so did Fittipaldi and Pace and others - but Teddy Mayer persuaded James to go on..."

The following year, in dry and sunny conditions, Hunt dominated the Japanese Grand Prix. It was to be the last win of his career - and the end of F1 at Fuji for 30 years.

Hamilton may have talked it up during the days before the race, but on Sunday he was perfect in the race car on an afternoon which hardly lent itself to perfection. On the back foot he may have been at Monza and Spa, but this was a world champion's drive.