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2000 Japanese GP News
6 - 8 October  2000  

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Drivers Championship Constructors Championship
Japanese GP Practice timed results
Japanese GP Qualifying and Race timed results

Japanese Grand Prix Race Report.

Michael Schumacher wins the Japanese Grand Prix and secures his third Drivers' World Championship and the 1st for Ferrari since 1979. Mika Hakkinen was 2nd ahead of team-mate David Coulthard. Rubens Barrichello, Jenson Button and Jacques Villeneuve make the top 6.

The race was fought and won in the pits and the top 2 drivers were never threatened by anyone else.

Michael Schumacher starting from pole had a bad start while Hakkinen had a good one. Schumacher tried to block Hakkinen but failed. Rubens Barrichello also had a bad start and lost 2 places and so did Button while Ralf Schumacher and Eddie Irvine had good starts and were running in 4th and 5th.

Mika Hakkinen led after the first corner ahead of Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard. Ralf Schumacher, Eddie Irvine and Rubens Barrichello made the top 6.

After a few laps it was clear that the 2 leaders were running their own race as Coulthard who was in 3rd place was over 6 seconds behind.

Mika Hakkinen slowly increased the gap to just over 2 seconds by the first round of pit stops. Hakkinen pitted first and a lap later Michael Schumacher came in. Following the first pit stop, Hakkinen remained in the lead with a gap of around 3 seconds.

Towards the second round of pit stops, light rain started to fall and Michael Schumacher started to close the gap on Mika Hakkinen and just before Hakkinen made his stop, Schumacher was 1 second behind. Schumacher stayed out for 2 laps more than Hakkinen and when he pitted and rejoined, he was ahead of Hakkinen by around 4 seconds. Hakkinen appeared to try and close the gap but couldn't as Schumacher was actually increasing the gap slightly.

With just 5 laps to go, it was clear that unless Schumacher has a mechanical problem he would win and that's what happened.

Behind the 2 there was little action. Coulthard and Barrichello ran there own race with Coulthard steady in 3rd while Barrichello had to use clever pit stops to move from 6th to 4th. Jenson Button had a bad start and dropped to 7th at the start but managed to recover to 5th after the second pit stop. Jacques Villeneuve didn't have a good start either and remained in 9th but was one of the few drivers who managed to overtake on this track, he was up to 7th position after overtaking Herbert and Irvine on the track and moved up to 6th when Ralf Schumacher spun.

The Jaguar pair were running strong but just missed out on the points in 7th and 8th. Ricardo Zonta had a good race finishing in 9th after starting from 16th. The Sauber pair of Salo and Diniz finished in 10th and 11th while Pedro de la Rosa was the sole remaining Arrows finishing in 13th after Jos Verstappen retired early in the race.

The Jordan's who were expected to do well here had a bad race with Frentzen retiring and Trulli finishing in 13th. Benetton also had a bad race with Wurz retiring and Fisichella finishing in 14th. Both the Prost's retired yet again!

The Constructor's championship is not won yet but Ferrari are very very close. They now have 156 points against 143 points for McLaren. All Ferrari needs is 3 points (1 car finishing 4th) from Malaysia regardless of what McLaren scores as the maximum McLaren can score is 16 points (1st and 2nd).

Malaysia will also be the fighting ground for 4th place in the Constructor's championship with Benetton with 20 points closely followed by BAR with 18 points and Jordan with 17 points.

Congratulations to Michael Schumacher and Ferrari.

Click here for the lap by lap history of the race
Click here for the timed results
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