F1: Button's late season charge isn't enough to block Vettel's title

Button's second place in the championship is not secure, either. Fernando Alonso is having a resurgence at Ferrari and he was close behind Button at the finish.

Vettel settled for third and Webber for fourth after Red Bull told them both not to do anything silly. Basically, that was an instruction to Vettel to give up trying to pass Alonso with five or so laps to go. That released Alonso from the irritation of defending his second place and he stormed the last few laps almost catching Button on the line.

But we soon learned that Button had been managing the gap and driving as slowly as possible, until the last lap when he grabbed fastest time of the day, later joking that he was mimicking Vettel's style. He crossed the line and parked the car, risking a fine for not putting the steering wheel back into place. Instead, he put it under a front wheel to prevent the car rolling down the main straight. Then, in front of the grandstand, he bowed tot he crowd before jogging back along the pit lane to the podium.

He was almost out of fuel and his last set of tyres wore out sooner than expected, causing him some uncomfortable moments.

So how was the racing: it's difficult to say because it looked superb, full of tactics and excitement with battles up and down the field. But it suffered from unfair competition: the Japanese GP started about 30 seconds after the end of what is, for many, the world's greatest motor race - the Bathurst 1000. Although, these days, the cars are boring (it is now part of the Australian V8 championship which is a duopoly between Ford and Holden) but the driving and racing are as far from boring as one can get. Mount Panorama is exactly that: a small mountain. The track is country roads: think Manx TT on a big hill in a family saloon that travels at more than 300kph. As the road drops away mid corner, cars are often in the air going one way while the road goes another. With a nose-to-tail finish after six gruelling hours where laps were regularly reeled off at qualifying pace, there was a shortage of capacity to be excited in the early laps of the Sazuka race.

But it did turn out to be a race that had surprises, right up until the end. Webber put in a storming performance to finish fourth. Hamilton and Massa tangled. Hamilton says it was his fault: that he didn't see Massa coming alongside on the outside of an approach to a chicane; Massa says it compromised his race because of minor damage. Hamilton had a puncture but the sensors didn't notice it and adjustments to the car to compensate for poor handling turned out to be the wrong thing to do because, once new tyres were fitted, the problems that were being compensated for were not there any more.

For a race with very severe tyre wear, with at least three pit stops per car, it's a surprise that there were no pit-lane incidents - except the one that resulted in Buemi being the only DNF : his wheel fell off after not being properly fitted.

Great result, good race. But it's not Bathurst.