Räikkönen's sensational Suzuka '05 win: Japan's greatest race?

Two days ago Max Verstappen won the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix – but, although his drive was a hugely impressive one, as is always the case when a man wins in a car slower than those of his closest pursuers, in terms of entertainment their race will not rank among the very best of the 39 world championship-status Formula 1 grands prix that have been run at Fuji and Suzuka since 1976.

So which have been the best Japanese Grands Prix? You will have your own opinions, all of them valid, but here are a couple of great ones to kindle your memories: James Hunt‘s dramatic third place for McLaren at Fuji in 1976, via which harum-scarum run he wrested the F1 drivers’ world championship from Niki Lauda, who had decided that it was too wet to race and had therefore retired his Ferrari on lap three; Damon Hill’s victory for Williams in the rain at Suzuka in 1996, which brilliant drive won for him the F1 drivers’ world championship; or perhaps one of the many fine grands prix that have graced the Land of the Rising Sun in this century?

Actually, let’s delete the question-mark and the word ‘perhaps’ from the last phrase of the paragraph above. In my opinion, without a shadow of a doubt, the best Japanese Grand Prix took place 20 years ago, in 2005, and here’s why.

Two weeks previously, at Interlagos, Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Räikkönen had delivered a McLaren one-two, but Fernando Alonso‘s third place for Renault had netted him points sufficient to win him the 2005 F1 drivers’ world championship. Nonetheless, as the F1 circus flew into Japan, the 2005 F1 constructors’ world championship was still delicately poised: McLaren led with 164 points, just two points ahead of Renault on 162. I was there, a full-time journalist in those days, and, although I would have been surprised if you had told me that in just a couple of years’ time I would agree terms with Ron Dennis to become McLaren’s comms/PR chief, I was already chummy with him, or as chummy as the McLaren boss ever allowed himself to be with pressmen.

Dennis was on edge from the outset at Suzuka that weekend. That year’s McLaren, the MP4-20, was not only one of the most beautiful F1 cars of the noughties decade but also, in 2005, its fastest so far. Yes, the 2005 Renault R25 was also a handsome and rapid machine, but, had the McLaren’s Mercedes V10 been more reliable, the 2005 F1 world championships, both drivers’ and constructors’, would surely have gone to Woking, not Enstone. Even as things were, McLaren won more grands prix in 2005 than Renault did, and Ron was consequently furious on a more or less permanent basis about what he saw as Mercedes’ contumacious underperformance.

To add to Dennis’s disquiet at Suzuka 20 years ago, qualifying was rendered a lottery by a sudden rainstorm halfway through the hour, by which time a number of the fancied runners had not put in a fast lap, for 2005 was the last year of single-lap qualifying in F1, as you may recall. So it was that Ralf Schumacher took a surprise pole position for Toyota, and an equally unexpected second was Jenson Button for BAR.

“The consensus among us was that Fisichella was favourite”

“Ralf and I were both very lucky,” Jenson readily admitted afterwards. “Maybe I was even luckier than Ralf, actually, because I’ve had a lot of understeer so far this weekend, so I certainly wasn’t expecting to qualify on the front row today.”

“The weather never usually seems to work to my advantage,” said Ralf, “but today it helped me. As a result, I think we’ll have a good chance tomorrow because some of the really strong drivers and cars are at the back.”

Indeed they were: his elder brother, Michael, recorded the 14th-best qualifying time in his Ferrari, 6.6sec slower than that of his little bro; Alonso was 16th, 8.5sec off the pole; Räikkönen was 17th, his lap a further 7.6sec slower than Alonso’s. As we journalists chatted in the media centre after the session, and as we began to write our qualifying reports, the consensus among us was that Alonso’s Renault team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella, who had qualified third, and was therefore the only driver in a competitive car who would start the next day’s race from anywhere near the front of the grid, would be the favourite to win it.

“I was lucky and unlucky,” said Fisichella on Saturday afternoon. “It started to rain on the last part of my lap, and that made the track surface too wet for the intermediates [tyres] that I had on at the time. So I missed out on the pole [by 0.2sec], but I’m happy enough with P3. Anyway, it’s going to be an interesting race.” Then, with an eye on the battle for the F1 constructors’ world championship, he added, “From where they’ll be starting, right at the back, it’ll be difficult for the McLarens to get on the podium.”

The next morning dawned warm, cloudy, but dry, and no rain was forecast for the rest of the day. When the race started that afternoon, Ralf took the lead, while Giancarlo outdragged Jenson into second place. Fernando drove an extraordinarily impressive first lap, and he was up to seventh by the end of it. Behind him, there was a bit of lap-one carnage, much of it centring on the McLaren drivers. Montoya tried to overtake Jacques Villeneuve’s Sauber at Turn 18, Villeneuve pushed him wide into a gravel trap, Juan Pablo lost control and shunted heavily, and that was the end of his race. And Räikkönen? His first lap had been almost as impressive as Alonso’s, until he misjudged his braking at the Turn 17 chicane, he went straight over the top of it, and he lost many of the places he had gained over the previous minute-and-a-bit. He began lap two in P12.

There he stayed, driving conservatively at first, establishing in his mind that he had not damaged his car, running in the wheel tracks of Felipe Massa‘s Sauber. Soon he began to pick up the pace, and by lap 10 he was ninth, having passed both Saubers and having benefited from an unforced error by Williams’ talented but erratic young Brazilian, Antonio Pizzonia. By now Kimi was the fastest man on the track, and, between laps 20 and 29, during which period most drivers made pitstops, he began to race magnificently. There is no other word. By lap 30 he was up to fourth, behind only Fisichella, who was now leading, Button, who was second, and Mark Webber, in the other Williams, who was third.

One of the drivers whom Räikkönen had overtaken during that 10-lap golden spell was Schumacher Sr, on lap 29, bravely and spectacularly: he had placed his McLaren squarely in the Ferrari’s slipstream along the start-finish straight; he had jinked it to the left as they had approached the braking point for Turn 1, a quickish right-hander; then he had braked super late; then, right on the limit of adhesion, he had driven around the outside of the most difficult-to-overtake driver of the era with a degree of aplomb that had made us all sit up and take notice. “Kimi could win this,” I said to my friend and colleague Peter Windsor, next to whom I was sitting in the media centre. “Nah,” he replied.

Fisichella made his second and final stop on lap 38, but Räikkönen stayed out seven laps longer. Would the overcut work for him? No, it would not. As the two cars began lap 46, the Renault led the McLaren by the whole length of the pit straight. All Giancarlo had to do to win was hang on for seven more laps.

In those days most pundits regarded the three best drivers in F1 as being Alonso and Räikkönen, and of course Schumi, whose status in the sport was then akin to Lewis Hamilton‘s now: primus inter pares; first among equals; the most successful; the most famous; the richest; still stunningly good but perhaps, when it came to delivering a red-blooded banzai charge with no margin left anywhere, just a smidgen less coruscatingly quick than the young Finn and the young Spaniard, than whom he was respectively 10 and 12 years older.

Then, as now, I rated Fernando incredibly highly. How can one not? But between 2003 and 2005 Kimi was as fast as anyone I have ever seen. Old boys who had seen Jim Clark dominate F1 between 1963 and 1965 used to tell me that, precisely 40 years later, Räikkönen sometimes reminded them of the great Scot, and there can be no higher praise for a racing driver than that.

I was torn – for, at that time, Fisichella was the driver whom I knew best, and therefore liked most. We used to chat often at grands prix, not only if we bumped into each other in the paddock but also over coffees in the motorhomes of the teams for which he was racing and, from time to time, in restaurants in the evenings. Indeed, I once visited him at his lovely house in Castel Dei Ceveri, a suburb of northern Rome, where we ate pizza together, cooked in his own pizza oven by his own fair hand.