The 2008 Japanese Grand Prix (officially the 2008 Formula 1 Fuji Television Japanese Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held on 12 October 2008, at the Fuji Speedway, Oyama, Japan. It was the 16th race of the 2008 Formula One World Championship. Fernando Alonso for the Renault team won the 67-lap race from fourth position on the starting grid, the last win for Renault as a constructor. Robert Kubica finished second for BMW Sauber, and Kimi Räikkönen third for Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton, the eventual Drivers' Champion, led the Championship going into the race, and started from pole position alongside Räikkönen. Hamilton's McLaren teammate Heikki Kovalainen began from third, next to Alonso. At the first corner Hamilton braked late, forcing Räikkönen wide. Hamilton was later given a penalty, and was criticised by the British racing press for overaggressive driving. Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, Hamilton's principal Championship rival, was penalised after an incident on lap two in which he touched Hamilton's car, causing it to spin. The incident dropped Hamilton to the back of the field, from where he was unable to regain a points scoring position. Massa later collided with Sébastien Bourdais of Toro Rosso. Bourdais was penalised after the race, and demoted from sixth to tenth position. The penalty prompted widespread criticism from the racing media and ex-drivers.

The victory was Alonso's second consecutive win; he started from 15th on the grid to win the two weeks prior and would be his last until the 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix. Kubica held off a determined attack from Räikkönen in the closing laps to take second place. Massa's seventh place narrowed his gap to Hamilton in the Drivers' Championship to five points. Ferrari established a seven-point lead over the McLaren team in the Constructors' Championship, with two races of the season remaining.

Background The 2008 Japanese Grand Prix was the 16th round in the 2008 Formula One World Championship and took place on 12 October 2008, at the Fuji Speedway, in Oyama, Japan. The Grand Prix was contested by 20 drivers, in ten teams of two.

Prior to the race, McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton led the Drivers' Championship with 84 points, and Ferrari driver Felipe Massa was second with 77 points. Behind them in the Drivers' Championship, Robert Kubica was third with 64 points in a BMW Sauber, and Massa's Ferrari teammate Kimi Räikkönen was fourth with 57 points. Kubica's teammate Nick Heidfeld was fifth with 56 points. In the Constructors' Championship, McLaren–Mercedes were leading with 135 points, one point ahead of their rivals Ferrari, whom they had overtaken at the previous race. BMW Sauber were third with 120 points. In the battle for fourth place, Renault had 51 points, five points ahead of Toyota.

A botched pit stop at the had demoted Massa from first position to the back of field. Ferrari decided to give up pitstop light system and revert to the commonly used lollipop man. With three races remaining in the Championship and a seven-point deficit, Massa remained confident about his title chances: "If you look at what happened to me in Singapore where my gap went from one point to seven so suddenly, then you have to consider it could easily go the other way as well." Hamilton emphasised the value that a conservative racing strategy could hold for his title chances:

Fernando Alonso's victory at the Singapore Grand Prix was his first Formula One win since rejoining the Renault team, after driving for McLaren in 2007. After qualifying in 15th and making an early pit stop, Alonso had managed to jump to the front of the race when his teammate Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed. Left with no opportunity to pit, the frontrunners had to delay their stops until the damage was cleared, allowing the heavily fuelled Alonso to move to the front once they did so. Though Alonso questioned whether his Renault team could match the pace of Ferrari and McLaren at Fuji, he said "We must remain focussed and try to repeat our level of performance from Singapore to fight at the front." Renault's technical director Bob Bell said that the team's improvement from the start of the season was encouraging, but "we recognise that we're not going to overhaul McLaren and Ferrari this season". Bell said that the objective for the last races was to win more Grands Prix and, importantly, secure fourth position in the Constructors' Championship from Toyota.

The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the sport's governing body, launched the Formula One component of their Make Cars Green campaign at the Japanese Grand Prix. For the weekend, the grooves in the tyres were painted green to promote environmentally friendly driving. FIA president Max Mosley said "The FIA is determined to ensure that future investment in motor sport will also help drive the development of technologies that will benefit the public at large." As is normal for a Formula One race, Bridgestone brought two different tyre compounds to the race; the softer of the two marked by a single white stripe down one of the grooves.

Practice

Three practice sessions were held before the Sunday race—two on Friday, and a third on Saturday. The Friday morning and afternoon sessions each lasted 90 minutes. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour. The Friday sessions were held in dry and sunny conditions. Hamilton was quickest in the first session, with a time of 1:18.910 that was less than two-tenths of a second faster than Massa. McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen was just off Massa's pace; Räikkönen, Alonso and Piquet rounded out the top six, still within a second of Hamilton's time. In the second practice session, Timo Glock, of Toyota, was fastest with a time of 1:18.383, ahead of Alonso, Hamilton, Massa, Räikkönen and Red Bull driver Mark Webber. The top seventeen drivers set times within a second of Glock's fastest lap, indicating a competitive field. Honda tried the new traffic light system, to inform the driver when to pull away from their pitstop, for the first time. The Saturday morning session was held on a damp track, where grip was poor and many drivers were forced to use the run-off areas after sliding off the track. Kubica was quickest with his final lap of the session at 1:25.087; Glock, Piquet, Nick Heidfeld of BMW, Kazuki Nakajima of Williams, Red Bull driver David Coulthard, and Massa rounded out the top seven positions. Hamilton managed only eleventh, but was ahead of Kovalainen and Räikkönen, in 16th and 17th positions, respectively. Both Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella of Force India spent most of the session in their garage, suffering numerous mechanical problems.

Qualifying

The qualifying session on Saturday afternoon was split into three parts. The first part ran for 20 minutes, and cars that finished the session 16th or lower were eliminated from qualifying. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 15. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position. Cars which failed to make the final session could refuel before the race, so ran lighter in those sessions. Cars which competed in the final session of qualifying were not allowed to refuel before the race, and as such carried more fuel than in the previous sessions.

Hamilton clinched his sixth pole position of the season with a lap time of 1:18.404. He was joined on the front row by Räikkönen, who was fastest for most of the final session. Provisionally sitting in third as the session drew to a close, Massa was pushed back to fifth as Kovalainen and Alonso put in last-minute laps to fill the second row of the grid. Kubica took sixth place, ahead of both Toyota cars of Jarno Trulli and Glock and the Toro Rossos of Sebastian Vettel and Sébastien Bourdais. Coulthard bettered teammate Webber when he qualified 11th; Piquet split the Red Bull drivers in 12th. The only Japanese driver in the field, Nakajima, managed 14th ahead of his Williams teammate Nico Rosberg. Heidfeld could only achieve 16th place, ten places behind his BMW teammate Kubica. Heidfeld spent the majority of the first session struggling with the set-up of his car. The Honda cars of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button filled the ninth row in front of the constructor's home crowd. The Force Indias qualified last; Sutil comfortably outqualified his teammate Fisichella by 0.8 seconds, to sit in 19th place.

Qualifying classification Driver Constructor Q1 Q2 Q3 122 Lewis HamiltonMcLaren-Mercedes1:18.0711:17.4621:18.4041 21 Kimi RäikkönenFerrari1:18.1601:17.7331:18.6442 323 Heikki KovalainenMcLaren-Mercedes1:18.2201:17.3601:18.8213 45 Fernando AlonsoRenault1:18.2901:17.8711:18.8524 52 Felipe MassaFerrari1:18.1101:17.2871:18.8745 64 Robert KubicaBMW Sauber1:18.6841:17.9311:18.9796 711 Jarno TrulliToyota1:18.5011:17.5411:19.0267 812 Timo GlockToyota1:17.9451:17.6701:19.1188 915 Sebastian VettelToro Rosso-Ferrari1:18.5591:17.7141:19.6389 1014 Sébastien BourdaisToro Rosso-Ferrari1:18.5931:18.1021:20.16710 119 David CoulthardRed Bull-Renault1:18.3031:18.18711 126 Nelson Piquet Jr.Renault1:18.3001:18.27412 1310 Mark WebberRed Bull-Renault1:18.3721:18.35413 148 Kazuki NakajimaWilliams-Toyota1:18.6401:18.59414 157 Nico RosbergWilliams-Toyota1:18.7401:18.67215 163 Nick HeidfeldBMW Sauber1:18.83516 1717 Rubens BarrichelloHonda1:18.88217 1816 Jenson ButtonHonda1:19.10018 1920 Adrian SutilForce India-Ferrari1:19.16319 2021 Giancarlo FisichellaForce India-Ferrari1:19.91020Source:

Race

The conditions on the grid were dry before the race. The air temperature was and the track temperature was ; conditions were expected to remain consistent throughout the race. Most of the frontrunners began the race on the harder compound tyre; only Massa was using the softer option. The attendance on the day of the Grand Prix was 105,000 people. Räikkönen accelerated faster than Hamilton off the line, getting ahead of him down the first straight, but the McLaren driver pulled into the Ferrari's slipstream, before swerving to overtake Räikkönen in the inside of the corner. Going into the first corner, Hamilton badly locked-up his front wheels while braking and ran wide; although there was no contact, Räikkönen was also forced wide in avoidance. This was then followed by contact with Kovalainen, which finally forced Räikkönen off the track. All three drivers dropped back down the field as a result of the incident. Kubica took the lead ahead of Alonso and Kovalainen after the corner, avoiding collisions as other cars locked their tyres on the cold track. Fisichella drove into the back of Barrichello, scattering carbon fibre over the track. Coulthard collided with Bourdais and then Piquet, sustaining suspension damage and sliding into the barriers after turn two. Nakajima left the track trying to avoid Coulthard, although he managed to rejoin after losing his front wing. The Japanese driver made a pit stop at the end of the lap for a new wing.