Post-GP Stats Analysis: Japan

Renault match Brabham

Fernando Alonso scored the 35th win for Renault, taking the French outfit to the fifth all-time spot to match Brabham, who scored their last win in the 1985 French Grand Prix with Nelson Piquet, before folding during the 1992 season.

Ferrari, the fastest

Felipe Massa scored his tenth career fastest lap. This is the 12th fastest lap this season by a Ferrari car, the second all-time high for a single championship.

In 2004, Ferrari were able to record 14 fastest laps, while there are five other seasons with one team setting 12 fast laps: 2000 (McLaren), 2002 (Ferrari), 2005 (McLaren), 2007 (Ferrari).

Everyone is leading

Sebastien Bourdais was able to run three laps in the lead during the Japanese Grand Prix, becoming the 15th driver that this year hit the front during the races. This ties an absolute record in the history of Formula One, which was set also in 1954, 1956, 1957, 1960 and 1975. In the first four instances, though, the Indianapolis 500 races helped to raise the value, since the drivers running in the American race were usually different from the ones that regularly contested in the world championship.

For Bourdais, it was his first F1 race in the lead, while for Alonso and Raikkonen it was the 50th. Fernando and Kimi are only one race shy of Jackie Stewart to clinch the seventh all-time spot. At the top of the chart sits Michael Schumacher with 141 races led.

This year, only Nakajima, Webber, Button, Sutil and Fisichella were not able to lead a race.

In the Japanese Grand Prix, the lead changed hands ten times - and this is the highest value recorded since the 1971 Italian Grand Prix, when there were 25 lead changes.

The Monza track was always the stage of many changes of positions, due to its long straights that favoured drafting. The absolute record, in fact, was set in Monza: during the 1965 edition there were 39 lead changes in 76 laps.

A dangerous place

For the eighth time this season the pole-sitter was victim of problems or mistakes that cost him the race. These are the other occurrences:

1. Malaysia: Massa runs in the lead the first stint, then is passed in the pits by Raikkonen and after some laps spins out of the race.

2. Monaco: Massa is wide at Ste Devote, recovers, but a bad strategy by the team costs him a couple of positions.

3. Canada: Lewis Hamilton rams Kimi Raikkonen in the pits.

4. France: Kimi Raikkonen is set for the win in front of teammate Massa when an exhaust fails.

5. Hungary: Hamilton is a victim of a puncture when he is running second.

6. Belgium: Hamilton spins early in the race and loses the lead to Raikkonen. He wins the race but is penalized for jumping the chicane and gaining and advantage.

7. Singapore: Massa starts from pole and leads cleanly but he is delayed by a pitstop problem, then hit with a penalty and is also victim of a spin in the closing stages.

By contrast, last year the win came from pole position 11 times out of 17.

Qualifying notes

• 12th pole position for Lewis Hamilton, who matches Gerhard Berger and David Coulthard at the 27th all-time spot. That was also the 140th pole for McLaren.

• Kimi Raikkonen is back on the front row after an absence of seven races. In 2007, Kimi lived a similar sequence from the Malaysian to the French Grand Prix. It's the first time the Finn qualified on the front row for the Japanese Grand Prix, and this is Raikkonen's 30th presence on the front row. Kimi matches Barrichello at the 18th all-time spot.

• Best qualifying performance for Fernando Alonso since the French Grand Prix, when he was third.

• It was only the second time this year that David Coulthard managed to qualify ahead of teammate Mark Webber, the other being the opening Grand Prix in Australia.

• For the first time since the 2007 French and British Grands Prix, Red Bull didn't qualify a car in the top ten in back-to-back races.

• Worst qualifying performance since the 2005 Spanish Grand Prix (17th) for Nick Heidfeld. It's the third time out of eight participations that the German qualifies 16th in Japan.

Race notes

• 21st win and 51st podium placement for Fernando Alonso. The spaniard now has the same podium places as Mika Hakkinen and thus clinches the top-10 all-time spot. The absolute record belongs to Michael Schumacher, with 154 placements on the rostrum.

• Fernando Alonso, after the Japanese Grand Prix, counts 538 career points, taking from David Coulthard (535) the fourth all-time place for points scored. Next step is Ayrton Senna at 614 points, while the chart is led by Michael Schumacher at 1369.

• the first place by Alonso and the fourth by Piquet is Renault's best performance since the 2006 Japanese Grand Prix, when they won the race with Alonso, and Fisichella came home third.

• Kimi Raikkonen was back on the podium after a four-race drought. The last time the Finn was down from the podium for a higher number of races dates back to 2004, when he didn't finish in the top three positions from the Australian to the French Grand Prix.

• The point-less streak of Giancarlo Fisichella reached 18 races, as the last time he scored points was at Fuji last year.

• Same fate for Jenson Button, who equalled his longest point-less streak, 12 races,which he recorded for the first time from the 2000 Malaysian Grand Prix to the 2001 British Grand Prix.

• It's the second time this season that there aren't McLaren cars in the points. The last time the Woking-based team didn't score points in more than one race per season was back in 2004, when they were outside the points in five races: Bahrain, Spain, Monaco, Europe and Hungary;

• Kovalainen's retirement affected the classification record of McLaren, who before the Japanese Grand Prix counted only two missed classifications: Kovalainen's wheel failure in the Spanish Grand Prix and Hamilton's accident in Canada.

This leaves BMW Sauber in the lead as far as percentage of classifications in the current season, as the Swiss-German team have only two retirements: a spin and an accident by Kubica in the Australian and British Grand Prix.

The two BMW Saubers this year ran for a total of 9,560km out of 9,739, for an incredible percentage of 98.1% of the kilometers run.