Fernando Alonso Wins Again, Championship Contenders Falter at Fuji

The scene: the mountains of Japan. The grid: headed by Lewis Hamilton. The lights go out and Lewis' championship nearly falls out of his hands completely.

Lewis doesn't have the best start of his season, and is passed by Kimi and Heiki. Then, heading into the first corner, Lewis tries to get back the lead he and fails, nearly taking out several other cars.

There are a few incidents down the pack as they all reach the first corner. David Coulthard takes the full brunt of one incident and crashes out of the race.

Felipe Massa and Hamilton fight it out until Massa over cooks a corner and nudges Lewis. I can hear many of you now saying that he did it on purpose; however, you can see he didn't it was just another racing incident.

A few more laps down and Lewis and Massa are both given drive through penalties for their minor incursions. So, the two contenders are way back and not looking like they are going to get much out of the race: time for damage control.

Alonso eventually grabs the lead from Robert Kubica and shows everyone why he is a double world champion with a fantastic, composed drive. Kubica had a small chance of taking the lead from the former world champion, but just can't put in the lap times he needs.

While Alonso runs away with the lead, Kubica and Raikkonen fight it out for second place, with, in my opinion, some of the best racing we have seen this year. No malicious maneuvers, no trying to take each other out, just good racing.

After the first round of pit stops, the order remains much the same; Heikki drops out of the running with engine failure. All the while Massa is slowly and quietly making his way through the pack until he takes Webber in the closing laps to get the last point scoring position.

Hamilton makes up a few places but can't get as far as I'm sure he would have liked. Could it be that the boy wonder is feeling the pressure again in the closing stages of the championship? Only time will tell.

After the race, the stewards decide that the Massa/Bourdais incident was Bourdais' fault and give the young Frenchman a 25 second penalty, promoting Vettel, Massa, and Webber all up one place. The gap now stands at only five points between the two championship contenders.

If Massa and Hamilton keep losing their cool, could Kubica take the title? As we move into the penultimate race of the season the championship once again turns into a three horse race.