This year’s Formula One world championship is the closest in recent memory, and it’s a fight to the wire between Red Bull Racing’s duo of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, Scuderia Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and the McLaren pairing of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton.

This weekend the teams all congregate at the 5.8km Suzuka circuit, for the Japanese Grand Prix, and if like me you like to watch the GP with your laptop of tablet conveniently to hand then you’ll appreciate this handy document from Mercedes GP Petronas providing all the facts and figures from past races, intimate details of every driver in the paddock including winning drivers from the past 60 years and the most successful drivers in terms of points.

It’s a great form-book for predicting who’ll be champion in 2010 and comparing the practice/qualifying times from the race this weekend with previous years.

Did you know for example that Vitaly Petrov is the porkiest driver on the grid at 79kg? Or that the shortest driver is Nick Heidfeld at 1.65m?

The more obserant conspiracy theorists amongst you might notice that Nick Heidfeld is mentioned ‘twice’ on the ‘Formula 1 in the World Wide Web’ page, listed alongside Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg in the first instance. With Quick Nick now being ruled out of a Sauber seat for 2011 but sounding confident that he’ll be on the grid, maybe this indicates that he’ll be returning to his reserve driver role – or of course it might just be a typo.

Anyway, take a peek and then amaze your friends with these and loads more of the facts contained in the booklet below…

fernando alonso Ferrari formula one jenson button lewis hamilton Mark Webber mclaren mercedes GP petronas Nick Heidfeld Red Bull Racing Sebastian Vettel vitaly petrov world championship