Japanese GP Prost race notes

Nick Heidfeld:
"First of all, I want to congratulate Michael Schumacher for winning both the Grand Prix and the World Championship today. As for my race, the start was sort of OK, but I lost a few places before coming back in a few laps to 17th position, where I remained a long time. After my first pit-stop, I lost some time when the leading cars started overtaking me, because there was a bit of confusion between blue flags and yellow flags signalling, by mistake, the safety car, after Jean's problem. I did not know what to do as they were waved at the same time along the track! For the rest, the car behaved well, but I was quite on my own since it was just not quick enough to progress further towards the front. Besides, something failed in the left rear suspension and, shortly after my second pit-stop, I was forced to retire."

Jean Alesi:
"I don't know what to say since I have not seen much of this race. It ended prematurely on lap 20 because of an engine failure."

Alain Prost:
"We would have needed exceptional circumstances to be in a position to gain a good result today and this did not happen. Unfortunately, our two cars retired with reliability problems. There is still one more race to give us a chance to score points even if, clearly, we are already thinking about next year."