2005 Japanese Grand Prix

Renault’s Fernando Alonso was crowned 2005 world champion at the previous round in Brazil, but the battle for the Constructors’ Championship between Renault and McLaren-Mercedes continued at the penultimate round of the season, with McLaren leading their French rivals by two points.

The teams that finished fifth or lower in the 2004 Constructors’ Championship were entitled to run a third car in free practice on Friday. These drivers participated on Friday, but did not compete in qualifying or the race itself. Of the six teams, only four had third drivers at Suzuka: McLaren (Pedro de la Rosa), Red Bull (Vitantonio Liuzzi), Toyota (Ricardo Zonta) and Jordan (Sakon Yamamoto).

McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa was fastest in FP1, completing 23 laps and finished more than half a second quicker than Toyota’s Ricardo Zonta, who was more than a second ahead of the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher in FP2.

However, the weather took a turn for the worse on Saturday and had an affect on the amount of laps completed. Michael Schumacher ended up top of the timesheets, over two seconds quicker than Kimi Räikkönen, with Giancarlo Fisichella clocking the fastest time in final practice, edging out Jordan’s Narain Karthikeyan by just 0.014s.

Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session was held on a wet track, with conditions later deteriorating, forcing some of the usual front runners to qualify near the back of the grid, setting up a potentially thrilling race.

Ralf Schumacher stuck his Toyota on pole edging out the BAR-Honda of Jenson Button by 0.035s. Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella put himself in a great position to take his second victory of the season after securing third, with local hero Takuma Sato fifth for BAR.

The end of qualifying saw the top finishers from the last race attempt to set a lap time, but by then the conditions had worsened. Outgoing world champion Michael Schumacher qualified down in fourteenth, newly crowned Fernando Alonso managed only sixteenth, Kimi Räikkönen seventeenth, with Juan Pablo Montoya down in eighteenth after not setting a time.

Toyota’s Jarno Trulli and Tiago Monteiro of Jordan also failed to set a lap time.

Qualifying classification

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Lap	Gap	Grid
							1	17	Ralf Schumacher	Toyota	1:46.106	—	1
2	3	Jenson Button	BAR-Honda	1:46.141	+0.035	2
3	6	Giancarlo Fisichella	Renault	1:46.276	+0.170	3
4	15	Christian Klien	Red Bull-Cosworth	1:46.464	+0.358	4
5	4	Takuma Sato	BAR-Honda	1:46.841	+0.735	5
6	14	David Coulthard	Red Bull-Cosworth	1:46.892	+0.786	6
7	7	Mark Webber	Williams-BMW	1:47.233	+1.127	7
8	11	Jacques Villeneuve	Sauber-Petronas	1:47.440	+1.334	8
9	2	Rubens Barrichello	Ferrari	1:48.248	+2.142	9
10	12	Felipe Massa	Sauber-Petronas	1:48.278	+2.172	10
11	19	Narain Karthikeyan	Jordan-Toyota	1:48.718	+2.612	11
12	8	Antonio Pizzonia	Williams-BMW	1:48.898	+2.792	12
13	21	Christijan Albers	Minardi-Cosworth	1:50.843	+4.737	13
14	1	Michael Schumacher	Ferrari	1:52.676	+6.570	14
15	20	Robert Doornbos	Minardi-Cosworth	1:52.894	+6.788	15
16	5	Fernando Alonso	Renault	1:54.667	+8.561	16
17	9	Kimi Räikkönen	McLaren-Mercedes	2:02.309	+16.203	17
18	10	Juan Pablo Montoya	McLaren-Mercedes	No time		18
19	16	Jarno Trulli	Toyota	No time		PL1
20	18	Tiago Monteiro	Jordan-Toyota	No time		20
Source:[3]

Notes

• ^1 – Jarno Trulli started from the pit lane

Ralf Schumacher maintained the lead off the start, with Giancarlo Fisichella jumped Jenson Button and Red Bull’s David Coulthard moved from sixth to eighth. But local hero Sato ran wide into the gravel at turn one and his right-front tyre was sideswiped by Rubens Barrichello. Both continued, but the left rear of Barrichello’s Ferrari was punctured, leading to a pit stop at the end of lap one. Alonso made a flying start and was up to seventh by the time the field was completing the first lap. Raikkonen went straight on at the Casio Triangle chicane, before teammate Juan Pablo Montoya crashed heavily while coming onto the pit straight after trying to drive around the Sauber of Jacques Villeneuve, but the Canadian squeezed him and onto the gravel, making the Colombian the first retirement of the afternoon and severely damaging McLaren’s Constructors’ Championship hopes. The accident resulted in the safety car being deployed.

On lap 10, Sato attempted to overtake Trulli into the chicane, but never looked like pulling the move off and the resulting contact forced Trulli into retirement. Ralf was the first of the leaders to pit, coming in for the first of three stops at the end of lap 13. This counted him out of the running for the race victory, with Fisichella assuming the lead.

On lap 19, Alonso pulled off one of the most audacious overtaking manoeuvres with a pass around the outside of Michael Schumacher at the infamous 130R corner. Raikkonen had a sniff of passing the seven-time world champion into the very next turn, the Casio Triangle, but had to settle in behind the Ferrari. Alonso stopped first of the trio, but because he pitted for fuel before Michael and Raikkonen, he came back out behind the duo, with Raikkonen passing Michael on the pit straight on lap 29. On lap 32, Michael went deep into the chicane, giving Alonso the opportunity to pass again, which he did down the pit straight and swept into turn one ahead of the German.

Raikkonen made his final stop on lap 45, handing the lead back to Fisichella. But as he emerged from the pits, Raikkonen was about to go on a thrilling charge. Alonso had closed up to the back of the Williams-BMW of Mark Webber by the end of lap 49 and despite being forced onto the grass, the world champion was able to complete the overtake on the Australian and took third place. Raikkonen took 1.3 seconds out of Fisichella’s lead on lap 49 and was now right on the rear-wing of the Italian. Raikkonen lined up the overtake going into the chicane, but Fisichella went defensive, leaving him vulnerable to an attack from Raikkonen, who was given all the motivation he needed to slingshot past the Renault into turn one to complete a brilliant recovery drive for his seventh win of the season.

Race classification

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	9	Kimi Räikkönen	McLaren-Mercedes	53	1:29:02.212	17	10
2	6	Giancarlo Fisichella	Renault	53	+1.633	3	8
3	5	Fernando Alonso	Renault	53	+17.456	16	6
4	7	Mark Webber	Williams-BMW	53	+22.274	7	5
5	3	Jenson Button	BAR-Honda	53	+29.507	2	4
6	14	David Coulthard	Red Bull-Cosworth	53	+31.601	6	3
7	1	Michael Schumacher	Ferrari	53	+33.879	14	2
8	17	Ralf Schumacher	Toyota	53	+49.548	1	1
9	15	Christian Klien	Red Bull-Cosworth	53	+51.925	4
10	12	Felipe Massa	Sauber-Petronas	53	+57.509	10
11	2	Rubens Barrichello	Ferrari	53	+1:00.633	9
121	11	Jacques Villeneuve	Sauber-Petronas	53	+1:23.221	8
13	18	Tiago Monteiro	Jordan-Toyota	52	+1 Lap	20
14	20	Robert Doornbos	Minardi-Cosworth	51	+2 Laps	15
15	19	Narain Karthikeyan	Jordan-Toyota	51	+2 Laps	11
16	21	Christijan Albers	Minardi-Cosworth	49	+4 Laps	13
Ret	8	Antônio Pizzonia	Williams-BMW	9	Spun off	12
Ret	16	Jarno Trulli	Toyota	9	Collision damage	PL
Ret	10	Juan Pablo Montoya	McLaren-Mercedes	0	Accident	18
DSQ2	4	Takuma Sato	BAR-Honda	52	Disqualified	5
Source:[4]

Notes

• ^1 – Jacques Villeneuve was handed a 25-second time penalty for his collision with Juan Pablo Montoya
• ^2 – Takuma Sato finished sixteenth but was disqualified from the final classification for his collision with Jarno Trulli

Drivers' Championship standings Pos. Driver Points 1 Fernando Alonso 123 2 Kimi Räikkönen 104 1 3 Michael Schumacher 62 1 4 Juan Pablo Montoya 60 5 Giancarlo Fisichella 53 Source: [5]

Constructors' Championship standings Pos. Constructor Points 1 1 Renault 176 1 2 McLaren-Mercedes 174 3 Ferrari 100 4 Toyota 82 5 Williams-BMW 64 Source: [5]

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.