At the beginning of the year, we had the closest start to a season in Formula One history, with seven winners from the first seven races. Now it looks like we might be in for a very close finish as well, after a Japanese Grand Prix where Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel adopted a textbook two-stop strategy to win the race and turn the championship on its head. Last year, a three-stop strategy was the preferred option but this year we saw only two stops for the majority of drivers. This underlines both the performance and durability of our P Zero tyres on the toughest circuit of the year in terms of lateral energy, even though the compounds are generally softer this season and conditions in Japan were a lot warmer than they were in 2011. We witnessed a great battle during the final laps between Kobayashi and Button for third place, which was based on tyre strategy with Button trying to get the most out of a fresher set of hard tyres. We’d like to congratulate Kamui on the first podium of his career, which couldn’t come at a better place than his home grand prix, and also Felipe for his first podium of the year after a great race.