Muted celebrations on the victory podium at Suzuka said everything about a win for Lewis Hamilton being overshadowed by a serious accident involving Jules Bianchi at the end of a wet Japanese Grand Prix.
Hamilton, who beat Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg in a straight fight, expressed the views of F1 people and the watching world when he said his thoughts were with the 25-year-old French driver rather than the Englishman’s third win in succession.
Bianchi had spun off the wet track at the fast and very long left-hand Dunlop Curve, the Marussia hitting a large rescue vehicle busy recovering the Sauber of Adrian Sutil, who had gone off at the same place a lap previously. Bianchi, who was reported to have gone under the four-wheel-drive recovery machine, was rushed to hospital with a severe head injury and the race was abandoned with several laps to go.
The race also had a difficult beginning when persistent rain drenched the undulating 5,8-km track and prompted a start behind the Safety Car. The spray was so bad that the race was stopped after two laps and eventually restarted when the rain eased, the Safety Car finally releasing the field after another seven laps.
Rosberg had claimed pole, but only by a couple of tenths of a second, such was the continuing intensity of the battle between the Mercedes drivers. Hamilton tracked his team-mate, the leaders changing from wet to intermediate tyres on laps 13 and 14. Hamilton stayed in close contact for another 10 laps. When conditions were deemed to have improved sufficiently to allow DRS, Hamilton went on the attack, immediately closing the gap to less than the one second required for use of the overtaking assist.
Rushing downhill and into the DRS zone at the beginning of lap 29, Rosberg, sensing the attack but unable to see anything in his mirrors because of the spray, took the defensive inside line. Hamilton, in a precise and daring move, switched to the left and ran round the outside of Rosberg into and through the tricky first corner, both drivers taking care to avoid a repeat of the collision that wrecked Hamilton’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Hamilton immediately began to pull away and continued to lead through another pit stop for fresh Intermediates. Meanwhile, behind the Mercedes pair, positions had continued to seesaw to reflect the changing conditions.
The cleverest move in the earlier laps had seen Jenson Button, a master of the wet/dry track, change to Intermediates the minute the Safety Car disappeared at the end of lap 9. Button jumped from eighth to third as the rest eventually followed suit. Button, whose future is with McLaren is far from secure, would have finished on the podium had his second stop not also required a change of steering wheel.
Button rejoined behind the Red Bulls of Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel, both of whom had gambled correctly by running full wet settings in qualifying (which was dry but settings used for qualifying being required by the regulations for the race) and moved ahead of the Williams duo as Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa struggled for grip.
By an unfortunate piece of timing for Ricciardo, he dropped to fourth in the finishing order when the race was stopped prematurely and the results declared just after he had made his second stop and before Vettel made his.
The podium finish for Vettel was opportune on a weekend when he announced his surprise departure from Red Bull for 2015. Although unconfirmed, it is believed Vettel will go to Ferrari and replace Fernando Alonso, the Spaniard’s race ending early when his Ferrari suffered an electrics failure on the first lap.
None of the detail seemed relevant, however, as news of Bianchi filtered through. The light had been fading and the rain increasing at the time of the accident, triggered by Sutil’s spin.
“It was quite difficult. In the end we got more rain and it was dark, so visibility was getting less and less and this corner was a tricky one the whole way through,” Sutil said. “When it got dark, you couldn’t see where the wet patches were and that is why I lost the car and it really surprised me. It (Bianchi’s crash) was the same as what happened to me – he had been aquaplaning but just one lap later.”
The teams now move to Russia for the 16th round of the championship next weekend.
