The Japanese Grand Prix yesterday will be talked about for years as a classic race in dreadful conditions, in which Lewis Hamilton first demonstrated his mastery of the rain in Formula One.

When the story of this season is finally written, it may well be that Hamilton’s performance at the Fuji Speedway will come to be viewed as the critical turning point in his charge towards a maiden World Championship in his rookie season as he reversed the momentum in his favour against Fernando Alonso, his rival and McLaren Mercedes team-mate.

But the race was not all about Hamilton, far from it. It also featured fighting drives from the Ferrari pairing of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa and a dreadful error from the Sebastian Vettel, the 20-year-old German rookie, who contrived to thump his Toro Rosso into the back of Mark Webber’s Red Bull while under the safety car.

The mishap on the 46th of a 67-lap humdinger, on a superb track set under a volcano wreathed in rain clouds and fog, produced the quote of the day from Webber, who was running second at the time and might have gone on to win the race.

The Australian, who was was suffering from a stomach bug and was sick on the grid, then sick again into his helmet on lap five, said: “This is what happens when kids with no experience come in [to Formula One] and they f*** it all up.” An intemperate remark in the heat of the moment it may have been, but it is also a reminder just what another “kid with no experience” has achieved so far this season.

If there was chaotic driving on show, there was also chaos about the rules for a grand prix that started in heavy rain under the safety car, which ran for a 19 laps before Charlie Whiting, the race director, let the drivers off the leash.

In an extraordinary oversight, it turned out that the Ferrari team were not informed before the start that their cars must use extreme wet tyres at the start – the e-mail to their technical director arrived too late - so Raikkonen and Massa, who started third and fourth on the grid, were forced to come in to replace their intermediates on laps two and three. The choice was a gamble that was never going to work in the conditions and Massa was furious that his race was ruined before it had started.

For Hamilton, the first key moment came when the safety car went off as he drove away in an explosion of spray, with Alonso right behind him. The Briton fended off an early attack from the Spaniard and then built a manageable gap. Having saved about seven laps of fuel running behind the safety car, the turning point in his battle with Alonso came when the McLarens went into the pits a lap apart, with Alonso first in on lap 27.

The Spaniard was unlucky to emerge in eighth place behind a gaggle of slower runners, led by Giancarlo Fisichella in a Renault in fourth, and he was trapped. Hamilton, with one extra lap of fuel, was much more fortunate and was back on track in third place.

He then survived a nasty moment when Robert Kubica, in a BMW Sauber, tipped him into a spin when trying to get by on the inside.

From the pitstop onwards, Alonso was always up against it, fighting not just the rain but also for track position. First, he collided with the hapless Vettel at the first turn, then his race ended in a dramatic wipeout at the sweeping right-handed fifth turn, where his McLaren aquaplaned and spun into a wall.