F1: Japan's 2010 GP is full of surprises

Not in qualifying, as such. That went ahead in a pretty normal fashion except that Jenson Button qualified fifth (promoted to fourth because Hamilton had a penalty). That Button was pipped to third position by Alonso by just 0.02 of a second was made all the more fascinating because Button was the only one of the top ten to start the race on hard tyres.

It made sense: he was as fast as those around him and he would have the softer tyres for later in the race when the car was lighter. As a strategy, there was not much that could go wrong.

But the portents were not good:

As the cars drove around the track from the pits to the starting line, Lucas di Grassi (who, as he left the pits under a green light is formally recorded as an entrant), crashed at 130R, totalling his car.

But his accident was as nothing compared to the mayhem in the first few hundred metres of the race: honestly, so far no footage has been able to show just what happened. There were two separate incidents.

In the first, Petrov slammed left into Hulkenberg taking them both out. Later, Petrov said he moved left to avoid a collision with Heidfeld. In the second, Massa ran onto the grass, then dashed right across the track, smashing into Liuzzi, reducing his car to its component parts - and some smaller than that.

Out came the safety car. Then, as the track was almost cleared, Kubica pulled off. He had had an excellent start and was in second, behind Vettel and ahead of Webber. His problem? The right rear wheel fell off.

And so it went on: Sutil's engine put oil onto his tyres so he spun in 130R: then it exploded dumping oil, fortunately just off the racing line. Instead of parking as soon as possible, Sutil drove back to the pits, smoke and oil spewing from the back of his car.

Then, almost at the end of the race, Rosberg who had fought off team-mate Michael Schumacher for at least half of the race, lost the back end and hit a barrier, smashing yet another car to pieces.

Hamilton, having lost five places on the grid because of a gearbox change found that first and third stopped working as he stormed up behind Alonso with every chance of taking third from the Ferrari driver. Button, whose strategy had fallen apart due to all of the accidents and because the softer tyres on rivals' cars did not wear out as expected, reeled in his team-mate at more than 2 seconds per lap, targeting Alonso who responded and almost caught Webber who responded and almost caught Vettel. Button politely said that the tyre strategy had been wrong and "we will have to look at that." He knows that he gets the credit for good tyre decisions so he can't blame the team if bad decisions are made.

Hamilton was somewhat more sanguine: "This wasn’t a great weekend for me... I’m thankful and so happy that I least saw the end of the race - it’s my first finish for a long time."

Everyone expected Red Bull to dominate and, for Championship hopefuls, a Vettel win was better than a Webber win. With three races to go, there remain five drivers with realistic chances of winning - although those chances for Hamilton and Button receded with a fifth and fourth respectively today. Even so, from Webber to Button is less than two wins v two DNFs.

And as today showed, DNFs can be startlingly frequent.