To the delight of the Japanese crowd, Kamui Kobayashi completed the podium for Sauber. The Spanish Ferrari man still heads the Drivers’ classification but his lead has now been drastically reduced to 4 points over second placed Sebastian Vettel. Felipe moves up one place to ninth. The Scuderia is still third in the Constructors’ classification, 20 points behind McLaren.

It was a beautiful sunny Sunday in Suzuka as the 24 cars lined up on the grid, with Fernando in sixth place on row 3 and Felipe four places and two rows further back, with both Ferrari drivers opting to start on the Soft Pirelli. Fernando’s race only lasted to turn 1 as he lost control of his F2012, after being nudged from behind by Raikkonen and had to retire.

The Safety Car came out as Rosberg parked his Mercedes and Webber pitted with damage, having been hit by Grosjean, but continued. After a great start, Felipe meanwhile had moved up all the way to fourth behind the lead trio of Vettel, Kobayashi and Button.

Raikkonen was fifth, then came Perez, Hamilton, Hulkenberg, Maldonado, Ricciardo, Kovalainen, Vergne, Di Resta, with Schumacher up from 23 to 16. By lap 5, Vettel in the Red Bull had a 3 second lead over Kobayashi’s Sauber, with Button a further second back in the McLaren, while Felipe was 0.6 off the Englishman’s tail and had Raikkonen’s Lotus a second behind. Over the next few laps, Felipe kept the gap to Button pretty much constant, while the Finnish Lotus man had drifted to 2.4 seconds off the Ferrari. Button, Raikkonen and Hulkenberg, followed by his team-mate, Di Resta, started the run of pit stops at the end of Lap 13. Kobayashi came in from second on lap 14 and team-mate Perez did the same next time round. It was Hamilton and Maldonado’s turn to change tyres on lap 16. Felipe was up to second on lap 17 when he and leader Vettel both came down pit lane, as did Schumacher and Ricciardo.

The next significant retirement came when Perez spun and retired the Sauber from seventh place, stuck in the gravel at Turn 11, after he tried to go round the outside of Hamilton. Lap 19 saw Felipe, now on the Hard tyre, put in a fastest race lap, still second as he tried to reduce the massive 9.8 second gap to race leader Vettel, while Kobayashi was now third, 2.6 behind the Brazilian. Completing the top six were Button, Raikkonen and Hamilton. Vettel responded with a fastest lap of his own on lap 22, which saw the gap to Felipe just go over ten seconds.

By lap 30 the gap between the two men at the front had grown to 12.7 and on this lap, Raikkonen from sixth, was the first of the front runners to make his second pit stop. Kobayashi, Hamilton and Hulkenberg came in together on lap 31. Hamilton almost collided with Raikkonen as the Englishman was coming out of pit lane, taking his McLaren up to seventh behind the Toro Rosso of Ricciardo, that had yet to make a second stop. Maldonado pitted the Williams from fourth on lap 33, followed by the Australian Toro Rosso man next time round. Button pitted from third on lap 35, which meant that only Vettel and Felipe had yet to make their final tyre change, the gap between them now 17.1. The Brazilian was the first to come in on lap 36 fitting the Hard tyre for the remaining 17 laps. The race leader made his final stop next time round and still led Felipe by just under eighteen seconds, while the Ferrari man had 3.3s in hand over Kobayashi. The local hero had the two McLarens of Button and Hamilton behind him, with Raikkonen completing the top six for Lotus.

At this point in the race, any changes of position were most likely to come right at the end depending on how everyone’s tyres were holding up, with all the lead group on the Hard Pirelli. While the fans in the stands were hoping to see a Japanese driver on the podium here for only the second time since Aguri Suzuki also came third back in 1990, fourth placed Button had other ideas and was catching Kobayashi with ten laps to go, while there was nothing Felipe could do at this point except settle for second and make sure he brought his F2012 home safely. In the end, the order remained unchanged and the Scuderia Ferrari crew rushed the length of the pit lane to cheer Felipe on the podium, after a drive that was not only brilliant for him, but also denied points for some of his team-mate’s rivals in the title race.

And now we are down to just five more races, with the next coming up very soon, next Sunday in fact in Korea.

Stefano Domenicali: “Personally, I don’t believe in luck, but given what’s happened these last couple of days, I’m considering changing my mind...The gods that didn’t shine on us yesterday definitely took a shot at us again today! What happened to Fernando at the start is an example of the many variables that you cannot control in this sport and we have to accept it, but clearly all of us are very disappointed at the moment. That sense of regret actually increases when you consider what a splendid race Felipe had, producing a truly impeccable performance. It was nice to see him back on the podium after a long, a too long time! This second place is a very important result for him and for the team and it comes at one of the most difficult and delicate moments of the season. Decisions regarding his future? One step at a time, as now we are enjoying this lovely podium together. Today, we could definitely have picked up a rather different points total, but we have to accept the reality: tonight someone is laughing, but as the saying goes, he who laughs last laughs longest! Five races is a lot and anything can still happen. We have to react calmly to this cruel blow for Fernando and work with maximum concentration on development of the car, as indeed we have done all these past few months. If we are in this position of fighting for the title in the final races, it’s because our work has been of a good standard, otherwise we would be a lot further back. Fernando’s comments on our development? I can very well understand his frustration at the moment and you can be sure that we are doing our utmost to give him a car that matches his talent.”

Fernando Alonso: “Today, we were very unlucky: to finish a race like this, at the very first corner is really a shame. Contact from Raikkonen caused a puncture to the left rear tyre and my race ended there. Unfortunately, when you start in the middle of the pack, these things can happen, because apart from the performance of the car -and ours is usually better on Sunday - circumstance can count for a lot. That could be seen from Felipe’s race, who started tenth, but produced a perfect race, fighting with the fastest cars. Clearly, this result has practically wiped out the advantage I had before, but if I’d been told at the start of the season that we would have been in this situation five races from the end, I’d have happily signed for it! Clearly, we must work a lot on the development of the car: I’m not worried, but we must react to the step forward that the other competitors have made. Now we start a sort of mini-championship, run over five Grands Prix. The aim will be to score at least one point more than all the others. What happened to us today could happen to the others next time: the wheel turns and that is what races are all about.”

Felipe Massa: “It was a fantastic race! Being back on the podium after almost two years away is just great and I feel really uplifted. They have been two tough years for me and, sometimes, a million things go through your mind, some of them bad, but finally I can be happy! It’s an important result psychologically and also in terms of my future, at least I think so! It’s even better getting back on the podium here, at a track I like so much and that I have known since the start of my career. Sometimes, in the hardest moments the best things come: the first people I want to thank right now are my family, my wife and my son. This race motivates me even more for the rest of the season. I feel very sorry for Fernando, because I’m convinced that today we could have both been on the podium. After what happened yesterday in Q2, I was definitely not starting from a good position. I got a good start and managed to get through the chaos at the first corner unscathed and then I immediately felt I had a good pace and that I could keep close to Button and Kobayashi. I got past them at the pit stop thanks to a great strategy and immediately I realised that, even on the Hard, my pace was competitive. The team did a great job and provided me with a competitive car: the only difficult moment of the weekend, for which we still don’t have a reason, was the damned second run in Q2... Now we must focus immediately on the race in Korea, because with five races left to go, anything is still possible.”

Pat Fry: “A bitter sweet Sunday afternoon for us here in Suzuka. Felipe drove a fantastic race right from the start. He was quicker than Button in the first stint and was able to manage the tyres so as to delay his first stop which gave him the opportunity to get by at the pit stop. He managed it and also succeeded in passing Kobayashi, thus opening the door to a race based on two stops. The same thing happened with the Hard tyres, as he managed them very well, which set him up to get back on the podium after a break of almost two years. Quite different emotions when it comes to Fernando of course and it couldn’t be otherwise, when one’s race is over at the first corner after the start... Usually, our car is better in the race than in qualifying, but I have to say that, on top of that, we were definitely unlucky with the yellow flags which cost Fernando around a second and a half. Clearly we were not as strong as the Red Bulls, but we were definitely a match for the McLarens that in Singapore had seemed out of our reach. We must not react in an emotional fashion, but rather we need to stay calm and concentrate on the job of developing the car. That’s the best way to react, right from the very next race in Korea. We brought some reasonably significant updates to the last few races and there’s more to come for the next ones. It’s true that sometimes, Singapore for example, not all of them worked in the right way, but it’s equally true that that is something that has happened to others in this season of highs and lows. Now we start again practically from scratch and everything will hang on the development of the car race by race. We must try to be better than the others and we know we have every possibility of doing just that.”