The one-day Japanese Grand Prix served as an acid test of which teams had arrived in Japan having done their Suzuka homework. The smart money was on Ferrari and Michael Schumacher and, as ever, they didn't disappoint. Atlas F1's Richards Barnes analyses the events of the penultimate round of the 2004 season

The long and one-sided summer may be over, the championships clinched and the drivers seemingly as absorbed in fun group outings as in squeezing the last few tenths and points out of their season's effort. But, in a summer of extreme weather conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, it was inevitable that the vagaries of mother nature would, at some stage, catch up with the traveling F1 circus. Typhoon Ma-on may have had the good grace to bypass Suzuka and leave an afternoon of watery sunshine for Sunday racing, but the havoc it wrought on Friday and Saturday added a new wrinkle to a direly predictable season.

For the first time ever, the weather conditions prompted a 'one-day weekend', with qualifying and the race both held on Sunday. F1 is often criticised for being too conservatively safety-conscious, but nobody could fault the decision to abandon practice and qualifying on Saturday. The 160kph winds accompanying Ma-on threatened to not only keep even the most ardent fans away, but also to turn the cars into low-flying missiles. While the worst of the winds didn't batter the circuit directly, it would take far less than such extreme wind speeds to upset a modern F1 car's tenuous grip on the tarmac. And, while it would have been a fascinating exercise to observe the wind's effect on braking distances, engineering curiosity will never trump safety.

With only a few laps of the drenched circuit on Friday to establish set-ups, the one-day weekend served as an acid test of which teams had arrived in Japan having done their Suzuka homework. In such conditions, the smart money is always on Ferrari and Michael Schumacher and, as ever, they didn't disappoint. In 2003, Schumacher had been the victim of worsening weather conditions during qualifying. This year, he was the benefactor of improving weather, going out late in both sessions and enjoying the best of the rapidly drying circuit. No doubt, Schumacher would have preferred to swap the two races around, winning in glorious fashion in 2003 and limping home in eighth position on Sunday. But the multiple World Champion learned long ago to take what's on offer and make the best of things.

It was a compliment to F1's professionalism as a whole that the rest of the field managed to maintain the performance differential relative to Ferrari, even without adequate time for set-ups and practice. Whatever challenge the F1 rulemakers or circumstances can throw at the sport's engineers, they are able to respond without missing a beat. The impoundment of cars on Saturday evenings, the demands of single-engine race weekends, and now the truncation of the weekend to fit both qualifying and the GP on a Sunday - none of these have posed a serious challenge to the focus and consistency of the engineers. When the ante is upped, they respond instantly and seemingly effortlessly.

If the teams responded admirably to the challenges posed by the unique format, Suzuka was less kind to many of the drivers. Not for their failure to achieve a top result, but for having one snatched away when they needed it most. After taking third on the grid with another inspired qualifying performance, Mark Webber's race was scuppered by a car that was scorchingly hot - in the worst possible sense of the word. It remains a mystery how any part of the cockpit could transmit or generate enough heat to burn Webber to the point of blistering. In possibly Jaguar's second last race in F1, it couldn't have come at a worse time. Webber will move on to greater things at Williams in 2005 but, as the consummate team player, it would have been fitting for the Australian to score a decent result as a swan song for Jaguar.

McLaren's David Coulthard was another who suffered cruel irony when he least needed it. Without a drive in 2005, the Scot had responded superbly by totally outracing teammate and champion-in-waiting Kimi Raikkonen. Of all the likely villains to spoil Coulthard's race effort, Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello was the least expected. As two of the most seasoned racers in the sport, Coulthard and Barrichello have often gone wheel to wheel and engaged in spirited but clean duelling over the years. Neither driver needed Sunday's race-ending contact, but at least Barrichello has two recent wins and a seat for next season.

Renault's Jacques Villeneuve is another feeling the pain of separation. Not from Renault, for the former champion was never more than a temporary stand-in until Giancarlo Fisichella arrived, but from F1 itself. Villeneuve has had to shake a year of inactivity, and was expected to be competitive right away in a notoriously temperamental and unfamiliar car. The criticisms of Villeneuve's performance are hasty and unfair, but expected within the supremely competitive milieu of F1. With expectations still matching his status as an ex-WDC, Villeneuve will not be granted much time to establish himself at Sauber in 2005.

Perhaps the most crushing personal disappointment, though, was BAR's Takuma Sato. Visibly buoyed by racing on home soil, and willed on by his masses of Suzuka fans, Sato's finish one place off the coveted podium was made worse by the fact that teammate Jenson Button had prevailed as the leading BAR-Honda driver again. Sato should not despair at his performance. He has quietly developed into a far better driver over the course of the season, and his increased consistency was key to BAR overhauling Renault in the Constructors' Championship. Sato has also developed the consistency to put in a full race effort week after week, a vast improvement over his early days when just keeping the car on the tarmac for a full stint was a rare achievement.

Sato may not have the measure of Jenson Button yet, even though the Japanese driver (like the triumphant Schumacher brothers) opted for an ostensibly faster three-stop strategy on Sunday. But that overlooks Button's emergence as one of the best long-stint drivers in the sport. His smooth style is well suited to preserving his tyres, and his preference for 'slower but steadier' two-stoppers has proved very effective late in the season. It would be beneficial for Sato to partner Button for at least another year, as the unflustered Englishman seems to have had a calming effect on Sato too. But that is a situation that will only be resolved during the coming week - and could have a major effect on BAR's fortunes in Brazil and beyond.

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