By Sam Cooper
September 30 2007

Safety cars, spins, crashes, overtaking, rain and thrilling action were all part of today’s exciting Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji. Current championship leader Lewis Hamilton won the race, which lasted two hours, due to rain and long safety car periods. Hamilton has extended his championship lead to twelve points over his teammate Fernando Alonso who crashed out in the torrential rain.

The race was started under a safety car, and Lewis led the race until the 28th lap, when he pitted for more fuel. His McLaren mechanics fueled his MP4-22 until the end of the 67 lap race, Lewis used the same strategy as his teammate Fernando Alonso. Fernando pitted one lap before Hamilton, and was three seconds behind him when he did. Fisichella and another three cars were hurtling down the straight as Fernando exited the pits. Alonso missed out on rejoining in 4th place and found himself in 8th position.

Lewis meanwhile managed to rejoin the race back in 3rd place behind Red Bulls Mark Webber and Torro Rosso driver Sebastian Vettel. Hamilton then lost time, and the BMW of Robert Kubica hit the Britain with force, resulting in both of them spinning off.

A few laps passed and Lewis regained his rhythm and set some fast laps to get some distance between himself and Fernando Alonso., the other three cars that previously passed Lewis pitted handing Lewis the lead.

Fernando was spinning off the circuit, and the Torro Rosso of Vettel hit him going down to turn one. On lap 41, Fernando smashed into the barriers at turn 5, his car bounced off the barriers and span into the middle of the track, and brought debris from his wrecked car with him. The safety car was brought out again while the marshals cleared the wreckage of Fernando’s car.

As Lewis led in the ever worsening conditions Kimi Räikkönen fought his way bravely through to 3rd place, and began chasing down Hekki Kovalainen. Their fight went right to the end of the race. Hekki bet Kimi by a second, but better action was going on between Robert Kubica and Felipe Massa. The two kept hitting each other side pods. Massa went off at the last corner, and powered ahead of Kubica, and took 5th place.

Results will be shown below.

* Denotes 25 second penalty for overtaking under yellow flags