Reflecting on Suzuka: Difficult choices for Lotus and Mark Webber

Romain Grosjean did his best to give us a new winner and break Sebastian Vettel's vice-like grip on the top step of the podium.

Overall I enjoyed the crazy Korean GP more than Suzuka this year but once again we had to look down the running order for the desperate wheel-to-wheel action. This was typified by the two Williams almost getting together on the final corner while fighting over 16th place. Maldonado was a touch brutal on that one and I suspect the team debrief was pretty icy. It really is super competitive in the midfield and one glitch can mean a no points as Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo found out. Ricciardo's drive-through penalty was for completing a pass and maintaining position by running off the road in 130R. He couldn't hand the place back because his victim Adrian Sutil pitted immediately after. I thought the penalty was fair enough, with ever increasing run offs and smooth kerbs this has to policed heavily, especially with this most contentious area. It's no different to the ref's whistle in soccer or rugby, it's always open to interpretation and personal viewpoints and experiences. Two of the three were the same stewards for Korea and Japan but we really need consistency over the whole year for the fans, drivers and teams alike. Charles Pic's drive-through penalty issued pre-race seemed slightly bizarre at first but how else can you penalise cars which are starting at the back anyway? And running a pitlane red light is a serious issue. We also had the situation where Adrian Sutil's five-place grid penalty for changing a crashed gearbox left him behind Van de Garde and Bianchi on the grid, who were given ten place grid penalties earlier. In fact Bianchi's ten-place grid drop saw him actually moving forward one place in the end. The penalty system is refined again for 2014 with more options including adding time to a race result rather than losing an effectively race destroying 20+ seconds for a drive through. I hope Vettel sews up the title in India so that we can get the inevitable out of the way and then focus on the various team and driver battles through the field. It would be great to see Mark Webber on the top step before he becomes an F1 'pensioner' too. We are going to miss his open and frank approach - although Red Bull won't. MB