Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari F2004 at Indianapolis in 2004. At Suzuka that October he took his 13th win of the season. Photo: Rick Dikeman / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
On October 10, 2004, Typhoon Ma-on wiped Saturday off the schedule at Suzuka, and Formula 1 ran qualifying and the race on the same day. Michael Schumacher took pole on a drying track that morning and won the 2004 Japanese Grand Prix that afternoon, 14.098 seconds ahead of his brother Ralf. It was his 13th win of the season, extending a single-season record he already held.
The championship had been settled weeks earlier, so Suzuka is not remembered as a title decider. It is remembered for two other things: a win total that nobody matched for nine years or beat for 18, and the way F1 squeezed a whole Grand Prix weekend into one Sunday when the weather took Saturday away. That fix has been used several times since.
A Season That Was Already Won
Suzuka was round 17 of 18. Schumacher had wrapped up his seventh drivers’ title at the Belgian Grand Prix in August, and Ferrari had already sealed the constructors’ championship. The Ferrari F2004 was the class of the field from the opening race in Melbourne. Schumacher won 12 of the first 16 rounds, and the four he missed went to Jarno Trulli at Monaco, Kimi Räikkönen at Spa and teammate Rubens Barrichello at Monza and Shanghai.
His 12th win, in Hungary in August, had already beaten the 11 he took in 2002. Every win after that pushed the record further. There was still something to race for behind the Ferraris, though. BAR-Honda and Renault were fighting for second in the constructors’ championship, and Jenson Button was heading for third in the drivers’ standings.
Schumacher’s previous race had gone badly. In China two weeks earlier he started from the pit lane and finished 12th. That bad result turned out to help him at Suzuka.
Typhoon Ma-on Closes Suzuka
Friday practice ran in heavy rain, and by then Typhoon Ma-on was heading for central Japan. Formula 1’s official history of the weekend describes it as a 160km/h super storm. The circuit was closed on Saturday, and the FIA moved both qualifying sessions to Sunday morning, a few hours before the start.
In 2004, qualifying had two parts. A first session set the running order, and drivers then did a single timed lap each in the second session. Because the Schumacher brothers had struggled in China, they ran late in the first session, and by the second the track was drying quickly. Running late was a real advantage. Michael took pole with a 1:33.542, and Ralf put his Williams-BMW alongside him, 0.490 seconds slower.
Mark Webber was third for Jaguar, ahead of the BAR-Hondas of Takuma Sato and Jenson Button. Several front-runners were caught out on the slippery track. Fernando Alonso qualified 11th, Räikkönen 12th and Juan Pablo Montoya 13th. Barrichello made a mistake at the chicane and started 15th. With no dry practice at all, teams had to choose tyres and set-ups with almost no information.
The 2004 Japanese Grand Prix: 53 Laps in the Sunshine
The storm had gone through by the afternoon, and the race ran in sunshine. Schumacher led from pole, rejoined in front after his pit stops and was never seriously challenged over the 53 laps. Ralf stayed close early on, but he pitted four laps before his brother and lost time in traffic.
Button ran two stops and Sato ran three, and Button let his teammate through at one point so both could run their own strategies. Button finished third, 19.662 seconds behind the winner. Sato was fourth at his home race, despite a flare-up of an old shoulder injury and a drinks bottle that stopped working early in the race.
Behind them, Alonso, Räikkönen and Montoya all recovered from their poor grid slots to finish fifth, sixth and seventh. Giancarlo Fisichella took the final point for Sauber. Barrichello set the fastest lap, a 1:32.730 on lap 30, but his recovery drive ended on lap 38 when he and David Coulthard collided while Barrichello was trying to pass. Webber retired when his Jaguar’s cockpit overheated, and he suffered minor burns.
Why the 2004 Japanese Grand Prix Mattered
For Schumacher, the 2004 Japanese Grand Prix was the 83rd Grand Prix win of his career and his 13th from 17 races that season. For Ferrari, it was a 15th win of the year, which matched the single-season team record set by McLaren in 1988 and equalled by Ferrari in 2002. It was also a home win for Bridgestone, Ferrari’s tyre supplier. Schumacher said the result was special, “particularly that it is Bridgestone’s home Grand Prix.”
For BAR-Honda, the day had extra meaning. It was the team’s 100th Grand Prix and came in the 40th anniversary year of Honda’s Formula 1 debut. Third and fourth gave BAR a 16-point lead over Renault going into the final round in Brazil, and the team held on to finish second in the constructors’ championship. It was a step towards the factory Honda team that took over BAR for 2006.
It was also the end of a career and a small milestone for another team. Olivier Panis drove his last Grand Prix before moving into a test role at Toyota, and Toyota started its 50th Grand Prix.
The Lasting Effect of the 2004 Japanese Grand Prix
The most practical legacy is the format. Suzuka 2004 showed that a Grand Prix weekend could survive losing its Saturday. When rain cancelled qualifying at Suzuka in 2010, it was moved to Sunday morning again. The same thing happened in part in Australia in 2013 and fully in Austin in 2015. In 2019, Super Typhoon Hagibis closed Suzuka on Saturday and qualifying moved to race day once more. Formula 1’s own record of these Sunday sessions starts with Ma-on.
The record lasted a long time. Sebastian Vettel equalled 13 wins with Red Bull in 2013. Max Verstappen finally broke it in 2022 with 15 wins, then took 19 from 22 races in 2023. Calendars had become longer by then, so Schumacher’s 13 from 18 in 2004 was still the best win rate in a season until Verstappen’s 2023 campaign. The Red Bull era that began with those records is still continuing, as the Red Bull Ford win at Sepang showed this season.
Suzuka 2004 was also the last big result of Ferrari’s run. For 2005 the rules banned tyre changes during races, and Ferrari, on Bridgestones, won only once that year. Schumacher never won the Japanese Grand Prix again.
Sato’s fourth place was his best result at his home Grand Prix. He went on to win the Indianapolis 500 in 2017 and 2020, and he is still the reference point whenever a Japanese driver is linked with a move to America, as in the Yuki Tsunoda to IndyCar rumour.
Related Reading on Backfire Racing
Four years earlier at the same circuit, Schumacher won the title that started this run: see how the 2000 Japanese Grand Prix ended Ferrari’s 21-year wait. For the peak of Ferrari’s dominance, read the 0.011-second staged finish at Indianapolis in 2002 and Schumacher’s 2003 Monza sprint. And for how Ferrari remembers the era today, see Ferrari’s Schumacher tribute at Monza.
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