The Qualifying session: Alex Yoong opened this season's last qualifying session, and after the other Finnish driver, Kimi, had taken a temporarily pole, Juan Pablo Montoya came on the track, passed two other cars and still took pole with -0,66! Mika came out after 19 minutes, joined by David and Ralf. Ralf took pole from his team mate but had to hand it over to the Flying Finn while David took 2nd place. After 25 minutes both Ferrari came on the track, Rubens taking pole but handing it to Schumi straight away. Five minutes later Mika gave it another try, took second place but had to give it up to Ralf soon after. David didn't improve with his 2nd run, while Rubens did, taking 2nd place from Ralf. Schumi improved his pole with -0,25 and Mika's third run was spoiled when he had to pass some slower car during his fast lap. Montoya takes 2nd place while Schumi ONCE AGAIN improved his pole and the grid at tomorrow's race looks like this: Schumi, Montoya, Ralf, Rubens, Mika, Fisichella and David. Kimi starts from grid place 12.

Mika's comment after the qualifying: "Obviously I would have preferred to be higher up the grid and that the gap to Michael was not so big. We were confident after this morning’s practice, but it just seemed the other teams made a massive step forward and we didn’t. The Suzuka circuit layout with its sweeping high speed corners requires a lot of front end grip, but we just couldn’t get it right. We tried to modify the car during the session and did all the usual things, which should improve the car like dropping the ride height and modifying the tyre pressures, but it never gave us enough. The team will have plenty of work to do before the race to understand the situation and find a solution. However, as always the race is a different story and I don’t expect there to be such a large gap. I’m confident that the engineers will find the right set-up and tactic and that we will be competitive tomorrow so I can start my break in a positive way".

The Race: The start was eventless. The only think worth mentioning was Fisichella, who managed to pass Mika Häkkinen, after which he kept both the McLaren cars behind him, letting the first four cars escape. However, after five laps Fisichella made a driving mistake, spund off the track and gave the McLarens a chance to catch up with the front. Speaking of escape, after just two laps we saw Schumi with a magnificent 6.33 gap to the second car, Montoya! In lap 6 we saw Alesi and Kimi Räikkönen in a bad crash. Kimi lost control of his car due to broken suspension in the rear (the rumor says), started to spind, and Alesi - who was right behind him - had no other choice but to go straight, hitting Kimi's car in the side, sending them both into the wall. Fortunately, it looked a lot worse than it was. Both Kimi and Alesi were able to walk away on their own two feet, but Kimi looked pretty shooked up. Alesi checked up on Kimi when passing him on his way back to the pit, but it seemed like Kimi was OK. In lap 9 Schumi lost control of his Ferrari and was forced to cut off a small corner but continued as always. Obviously it was too much to expect that the guy would have same luck like the other mortals in Formula One, huh?
First pit stop was made, not surprisingly, by Ferrari. Rubens came in first and it took 7.2 secs which made one speculate if Ferrari even has two stop tactic today? In lap 17 Schumi went to pit, taking 8.8 secs and insuring that he will do another pit stop later during the race! This also means that it's nearly impossible to tell who's gonna win at this point! Soon after we saw Montoya go to the pit, lasting 8.6 sec, putting a stop to the idea that Williams would have only one stop in Suzuka. Two laps later Ralf followed his team mate (9.0 sec), and now only the question about the McLarens was open at this point: Will Mika Häkkinen win once again due to better strategy? Unfortunately the speculations stopped pretty quickly after Williams' pit stops: Mika Häkkinen went to the pit after 24 laps, taking 7.6 sec. However, the good side about his stop was that he came back out on the track in front of his Team Mate, who still had his stop to make. Ralf received a 10 seconds stop-and-go penalty for cutting off a corner, not that I believe the man did it on purpose. But that was the ruling because he obviously benifitted from it. Rubens and Ralf went to pit at the same time, Ralf to do time :-) and Rubens for his 2nd pit stop which took a whole 12.6 sec!
After the stop Rubens tried to pass Ralf and was clearly faster, but Ralf refused to let him go and they had contact. Rubens was waving his hand in a probably-not-proper-for-low-PG-rated program :-) and Ralf finally let him pass (otherwise he could have expected another penalty!). Schumi's 2nd stop in lap 36, lasting 9.0 sec and returned to the track as number three, behind Mika. Verstappen also got a ten seconds stop-and-go penalty, for passing a car during the warm up lap, which is of course pretty brain dead of Jos. In lap 38 Williams took Montoya in for his 2nd pit stop (7.6) and the following lap Mika went in with same pit stop time.
Rubens went to pit for the 3rd time with only 12 laps to go! Mika Häkkinen started to get much slower lap time and was finally passed by his team mate with just a few laps left. It would have been nice to see Mika on the podium today, but I think we just gotta be satisfied to see him pass the finishing line with points. Whatever McLaren had figured out two weeks ago in USA, was obviously clearly forgotten again this weekend - and Schumi took an easy victory once again, followed by Williams' Montoya, David, Mika, Rubens and Ralf...

Mika's comment after the race:

An interesting fact: I suppose I could write here that this might be Mika Häkinen's last Grand Prix forever. He's now taking his one year off and it's impossible to say if he comes back. I personally believe he will, but if McLaren don't pull their act together, then he might choose just to retire. But Ron Dennis is already dreaming of a whole Finnish Drivers' Team so... we will just have to wait and see in 2003... *sigh*

Map of Suzuka