Stewards Decision to Wreak Havoc with Suzuka Grid

It looks like Buemi’s crash during Qualifying at Suzuka yesterday bringing out a yellow flag while a number of cars were trying to set their qualifying times will impact the final Grid positions.

After Qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix had finished the Stewards handed down a number of penalties that will completely change look of the Grid for the race later today.

Alonso, Barrichello, Button and Sutil have all been penalized 5 grid positions for not reducing their speed under a yellow flag, and Buemi who caused the incident was reprimanded and penalized 5 positions for impeding the progress and endangering the other cars on track.

While the FIA has made no official announcement about the final formation of Grid, if we just use the penalties imposed the grid will most likely look like this:

Predicted Japanese Grand Prix Starting Grid Positions

If Jenson Button was hoping to clinch the drivers championship this weekend, he is really going to have his work cut out for him, Vettel is looking extremely fast and unless he has some form of Mechanical failure stands a very good chance of winning the race, or at least finishing substantially ahead of Button. Barrichello while also penalized is still ahead of Button on the Grid, qualifying better than Button in 7 of the last eight Races. So the likelihood is that the Championship will not be settled in Japan and will go on to Brazil.

In any event if Qualifying is anything to go by, the Race is going to be pretty exciting and may just come down to the last car still running given the number of crashes so far.

Tagged as: 2009 Japanese Grand Prix, Adrian Sutil, Barrichello, Buemi, Button, F1 Qualifying, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel