McLaren drivers' hopes hanging by a thread
"It's not been our greatest weekend," McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh admitted even before the Japanese Grand Prix started. Two hours later, it did not even look that good for Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. Hamilton's pre-race assessment of it being one of his "worst weekends" was pretty much spot on.
After the race, Whitmarsh put a brave face on things, saying it was not the "bigger disaster" he had feared at some points over the weekend. But the reality is that Suzuka dealt a heavy blow to the championship hopes of both McLaren drivers.
Why Robert Kubica is arguably the best driver in F1
Although Robert Kubica's Japanese Grand Prix lasted only a couple of laps behind the safety car, his qualifying performance emphasised again the Renault driver's claim to being a future world champion.
On the Formula 1 calendar there are only three outstanding driver's tracks - where there is scope for a great driver to transcend the level of his car. They are Monaco, Spa and Suzuka.
The remainder are 'technical tracks', where the lap-time potential is defined almost totally by the car, the difference between a great and a good driver on the stopwatch relatively small.
Analysing Massa's 2010 struggle
Felipe Massa is the odd-man-out in the world championship fight. Cast adrift from team-mate Fernando Alonso and his battle with the Red Bull/McLaren drivers, even when he briefly led the standings early in the season he has never really threatened to contend for the crown that he came within 20 seconds of winning in 2008.
Yes, having to hand German Grand Prix victory to Alonso a year to the day since his life-threatening qualifying crash in Hungary was a bitter blow, but that is the only race that he has looked like winning. Even the most staunch Massa fan would have to admit that this has been an underwhelming season.
The power struggle of engine regulations
Could the comparatively crude V8 engines that have powered Formula 1 for the past five years turn out be pawns in the expected power struggle for control of Formula 1 come the end of the current Concorde Agreement at end-2012?
It would appear so, certainly if the seemingly throw-away remark made by a senior F1 team when asked about what progress had made on the new engines regulations since the last race in Monza.
