The late-season charity being showered around by the 2011 Formula One season continued in Brazil, after Lewis Hamilton's morale-boosting win in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago. This time around, it was the turn of beleaguered Red Bull Racing deputy Mark Webber to benefit from another bout of bad luck for his champion team mate Sebastian Vettel to grab the final slice of glory for the season, and bring a 25 race losing streak to an abrupt and cheery end.
As with Hamilton's victory at the Yas Marina circuit, there was a sense that Vettel had only been denied the victory thanks to circumstances outside of his control. While the gearbox glitch he suffered here proved less terminal than his opening lap puncture in Abu Dhabi, the problem was enough to cripple him to the extent that Webber was able to move past his team mate and ease away to take a somewhat crushing victory, with Red Bull's rivals very much fighting for second best this weekend.
Whether or not this win proves to be a cleansing moment for Webber, washing away the humbling experience he has suffered in 2011 and allowing him to return in 2012 a refreshed and reinvigorated driver, and a genuine rival for Vettel, or whether this is remembered as a token late-season win for a patient number two driver, will only be known with time. But at least Webber can go into the off-season as a grand prix winner once again.
Practice and Qualifying
The weekend even began well for the Australian, as Webber topped the slightly pedestrian opening practice session of the final GP weekend of 2011, finishing top by just under a tenth of a second from McLaren's Jenson Button. Hamilton began the weekend in third place, with Vettel a somewhat circumspect fourth.
The weekend began with frustration for Fernando Alonso, who was forced to end his session early as his practice-only Ferrari engine expired, while fans were treated to the thrilling sight of Jan Charouz making his F1 race weekend debut for HRT, an event that may well have been the most spectacular moment of the entire season so far.
Into the afternoon session, and McLaren reasserted themselves, with Hamilton moving to the front on the back of his Abu Dhabi race win in a session where the times were Interlagos-spec in their closeness. The top eight drivers, including both Ferrari and both Mercedes drivers, ended within half a second of top spot.
Behind Hamilton, Vettel was second, but admitted that the team needed to make changes overnight to get properly competitive, while Webber slipped to third from Alonso, Michael Schumacher and Felipe Massa. Further back, Team Lotus were showing better speed having rolled out an upgraded version of their DRS wing, and both Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen finished within snapping distance of the hapless Williams drivers.
On Saturday, Vettel's call for extra pace from the RB7 package at the Interlagos track was answered by the team, as the German moved ahead on the final practice session of the season. His late-session qualifying simulation was enough to leave him a tenth of a second ahead of Button, with Webber and Hamilton close behind as the best two teams of the season continued to monopolise the top spots.
Qualifying was another masterclass from Vettel, who set a new record for pole positions in a single season in netting his 15th of 2011. His final lap of Q3, a 1:11.918 (the first sub-1:12 lap of the weekend) was terrifyingly good, both in the final lap time, and the fact that he didn't quite have a perfect final sector, which cost him a tenth or two. Had he needed to, Vettel could well have gone even faster.
He didn't need to though, as his rivals couldn't get close to his final benchmark. Webber at least managed to lock-out the front row of the grid for Red Bull, leaving McLaren scratching their heads back on row two, Button ahead of Hamilton. Alonso took his standard fifth place, while Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg - second fastest in Q2 - faded to sixth when the chips were down, consoling himself with the fact that he finished ahead of the second Ferrari of Massa.
Further back, and despite Massa's latest failure, there was some joy for the home fans as Bruno Senna set nostalgist hearts racing in securing 9th on the grid with his emotive surname/helmet/livery combination, while everyone's favourite doddering F1 OAP Rubens Barrichello secured a creditable 12th place in his chronic Williams machine for what could well have turned out to be his final F1 race.
Further back, Team Lotus failed to live up to their FP2 expectations with their new rear wing arrangement, and took their usual positions on the third-from-back row, while HRT secured some late-season bragging rights over fellow hapless newbies Virgin when both of their drivers outqualified their backmarking rivals.
But once again in 2011 there was only one lap that really mattered in qualifying, and that came from Vettel. Nigel Mansell can console himself that his record of 14 poles came from only 16 races back in 1992, but in raw statistics alone, Vettel now reigns alone at the top of another record list. "I tried to help old Nigel out today but it didn't work out," Webber joked afterwards. Fortunately for him, after being found wanting against Vettel again on Saturday, things would go his way in the race.
The Race
Down the years, Interlagos has provided any number of spectacular races, whether it was hosting a title-decider or an early season race. But it is safe to say that anyone writing a potted history of Formula One in Brazil in future might hastily gloss over the 2011 event. As with most of the races in the second half of the season, there was potential for excitement throughout the majority of the race, but for whatever reason things never quite clicked into place, and instead fans were left with an apathetic whimper as the denouement to a season that has by and large been more entertaining than it has been dull.
At the start, there was plenty of hope for a thriller, with predictions of rain to come at some point through the afternoon's racing. Similar promises had been made before qualifying, and failed to deliver, and once again on Sunday, Formula One's weather radar was out of kilter with reality. It may have been predicting plagues of frogs, but the Interlagos circuit stayed resolutely dry for the full 71 lap race distance. Good news for those that had conserved dry tyres in qualifying, and bad news in particular for Felipe Massa, who punctured a set of softs during his Saturday run, leaving him stuck on a two-stop strategy.
The lights went out, and Vettel secured yet another comfortable getaway to lead down into the Senna S for the first time. Webber was typically slow away, but he held the inside line into the first corner, and Button failed to find a way through, while both Ferraris made good starts, with Alonso getting the jump on Hamilton and Massa passing Rosberg. Sutil followed the German in eighth, from Senna and di Resta, who passed Schumacher to ensure that the seven-time champion chalked up a rare negative score for positions gained off the line.
Further back, Boobens tossed away any hopes he may have had of securing a much-needed points finish from his 12th place starting position, bogging down off the start and falling down to 19th place, something he would later blame on a long first gear caused by him stupidly trusting the weather radars and assuming that there would be a wet start. Thus began a long and frruitless recovery drive for the home hero. He was joined in dropping back on the opening lap by Jaime Alguersuari, who wrote off his chances of a points finish and gave Sauber an early boost in their fight for seventh in the constructors championship with Toro Rosso.
As the field lapped in a Brazilian procession, the man doing his best to make the early moves was Schumacher, who quickly tore past di Resta into the first turn on the second lap to reclaim a points-paying place and took off after Senna in 9th. The rest of the field were finding passing impossible in the early stages, despite the fact that Interlagos was usually able to provide entertainment even without 2011's gimmicks. The DRS zone itself, down the Reta Oposta straight towards the Descida do Lago corner at turn four, was simply too short for the flappy wings to have any effect when all things were equal.
By lap 10, Vettel's lead stood at some 3.8 seconds from Webber, though the team had apparently already twigged that something was up with his gearbox, and were eying up the data from his car on the pit wall with nervous faces. Behind the serene pair of RB7s scampering away into the distance, Button dropping to nearly nine seconds off the leader in third, and with his mirrors full of Alonso's scarlet Ferrari. Hamilton was also close behind in fifth, with Massa in a lonely sixth and Rosberg and Sutil jostling over seventh.
There was more action courtesy of Schumacher on that lap, when he made a bold attempt to pass Senna around the outside into the Senna S. Senna clumsily made contact with the side of Schumacher's car not once, but twice, damaging his front wing and handing a puncture to Schumacher in the process. That dropped the pair of them out of the running for points, with Senna's race further compromised when the stewards later handed him a drive-through penalty for his clumsiness, in what rather smacked of being an overly-harsh punishment for what had appeared to be a racing incident.
Still, while one driver was struggling to pass, another succeeded. Button came under sustained pressure from Alonso the next lap around through the complex at turns four and five, and went defensive early on into the Ferradura. But Alonso clearly had no interest in the inside line anyway, and swung a move right around the outside of the McLaren. "I saw lots of debris on the circuit, I didn't want to drive over it, and I couldn't pull to the left because Fernando was there, so I had to back out of it and fall behind," Button explained in mitigation afterwards, "It was a pretty easy move for Fernando to make after that." It may well have been, but it was still the pass of the race.
Shortly after that move, the first pit stop window was opened, with the McLarens in particular appearing to be suffering with some early tyre degradation. But by now, the cat was out of the bag in terms of Vettel's gearbox woes. He got the first call on lap 14 to short-shift on second gear, but that was quickly upgraded to a need to short shift in third as well. At the time, Red Bull did not see the car making it past half distance, and in second place, Webber now smelled blood, easing into Vettel's lead with every passing lap.
By lap 22, the first stops were done and dusted with minimal incident, with Massa briefly leading the race on his longer first stint given that he was locked in to a two-stopper. Vettel had managed to keep his lead pegged either side of the stops at 2.6 seconds to Webber, but as the laps ticked on, so the team became more despairing in their calls to their driver, wary of seeing their double world champion DNF two consecutive races by over-exerting the car. On lap 26, he was again reminded of his problem, the team now upgrading the issue to "serious", and now the situation opened up to Webber.
Over the next two laps, the Australian driver took full seconds out of the German's lead, and although Vettel appeared to be half-considering going for broke and trying to respond, he eventually realised the futility of the situation, pulling to one side down into turn one on lap 30 to allow Webber past. Over the next few laps, Vettel mistakenly fuelled some amusing post-race conspiracy theories that the gearbox issue had been a piece of fiction by the team to justify giving Webber a win by hanging on around 2-3 seconds behind his team mate, even setting a fastest lap at one point, but as the race went on, he fell further and further away.
A pass for the lead then, but not one that had anyone jumping for the edge of their seats. And with Vettel able to keep to a pace that was good enough to at least keep him clear of the rest of the pack, the interest now centred on the tussle for the final podium spot between Alonso, Button and Hamilton. Button made a tactical call on lap 32 as the second pit stop window slowly opened for those on a three-stop strategy, switching to the harder of the Pirelli compounds in an effort to find some better pace, with McLaren still struggling for performance on the softs.
While Button erred from the prescribed Pirelli strategy, Brazil following the recent pattern of standard tyre tactics throughout the field after all the early-season fun of mixed strategies, the rest of the frontrunners stuck with the softs, and by lap 42 Webber led by 4.6 seconds from Vettel, with Alonso 11.9 seconds behind in fourth. Button was six seconds down on the Ferrari with the harder tyres, while Hamilton was enjoying yet another scrap with Massa over fifth place, the two warring parties from 2011's biggest feud brought together on track after both made their final stops, the Brazilian already having been passed by the fresh-tyred Button earlier on while running out of sync.
For a while, the two squabbled, with Massa unrelentingly defensive in attempting to protect fifth place, but Hamilton had already had a call from the pits over a gearbox issue of his own, McLaren inadvisedly deciding to copy that particular aspect of the RB7's design. He doggedly continued on until lap 47, when he suddenly slowed to a crawl on the exit of turn three, his gearbox finally crying its last. He had already been out of the scrap for the final podium spot for some time, but now his fraught 2011 season was finally over. "I'll be attacking next season; 2012 will be my year," he Coultharded afterwards.
The battle for third was now a straight fight between Alonso and Button, and once again Alonso's early hard work in a race was undone by the team's dreadful pace on the harder Pirellis. Button pitted first to take more medium Pirellis, with Alonso following him in on lap 55. The Spaniard rejoined four seconds up the road from the British driver, but it didn't take long for Button to eat into that advantage, and by lap 61, with ten laps to go, Button was inside the DRS detection zone. The pass was now inevitable.
Alonso, as ever, didn't give anything up without a fight, but on lap 63, Button set him up through the Senna S, forcing the Ferrari man to defend deep and compromise his exit speed down the Reta Oposta, and he was able to coast past the scarlet car in as straightforward a DRS assist as they come. But then, the effort of that pass was more in the set-up than the move itself, the F1 equivalent of an intricate football passing move between team mates leading to a simple five yard tap-in.
From there to the line, there was little action to speak of, the field now spread out all the way down to the back. For a couple of laps, Button looked to be giving it a go to catch the ailing Vettel, but there was nowhere near enough time left, and the Red Bull 1-2 was as comfortable as any of their results in this dominant campaign. Webber took the chequered flag for the first time since his win in Hungary last year some 16.9 seconds clear of Vettel, with Button a further ten seconds back and Alonso limping home in fourth on his hard tyres. Massa took a somewhat uninteresting fifth place in the second Ferrari, the last of the cars to escape being lapped.
Further back, Adrian Sutil put in a barnstorming drive to take sixth for Force India, moving into the top ten in the drivers championship as he did so. The German trumped Rosberg's Mercedes on strategy, running a three-stop to his fellow German's two-stop, which allowed him to get past Rosberg on track into the first corner on lap 50, sealing the position. Rosberg ended another forgettable season with a forgettable seventh place, while di Resta benefited from the retirements and clashes ahead of him to take eighth, nearly enough for Force India to nick fifth in the constructors championship from Renault, but not quite.
The other big scrap in the constructors standings was resolved by Kamui Kobayashi coming through to take ninth place for Sauber, ensuring that the Swiss team triumphed over Toro Rosso, while Vitaly Petrov made up for bad-mouthing his Renault team last weekend by taking the final point in 10th. Alguersuari fought back through from his poor start to take 11th, one spot ahead of his team mate Sebastien Buemi, while Sergio Perez was 13th in the second Sauber after compromising his chances of a stronger result with a mid-race spin.
Barrichello crossed the finish line for potentially the final time in 14th place, and faces a nervous wait to see if he can find a home for 2012, while the recovering Michael Schumacher ended the second frustrating season of his comeback to F1 in 15th, just one spot ahead of the best of the newbie cars, Heikki Kovalainen's Lotus. The Finn beat Senna's penalised Renault to the line, while Jarno Trulli's Lotus, Jerome d'Ambrosio's Virgin and Daniel Ricciardo's HRT completed the twenty finishers.
Joining Hamilton in retirement were Timo Glock, who shed a rear wheel during his first pit stop moments after jumping the gun from his Virgin pit box, Pastor Maldonado, who crashed his Williams on lap 26, and Tonio Liuzzi, whose season with HRT ended with a crash at the Senna S late on.
The 2011 season is over, then, and Mark Webber can celebrate a fortuitous, if much-needed, race win at the last. "It is a good tonic for me this race. It's good to sign off the RB7 like this," he smiled afterwards, with a visible look of thankfulness on his face, "I think I will have a stronger season than this year." Time will tell if that is indeed the case, because on the evidence of this season, it will take something very special to trump his team mate next year.
Well, something special, or a broken gearbox.
Driver of the Race
Adrian Sutil - A drive from the German that he maybe could have done with putting in a little earlier in the year, if the reports of Force India already having made their mind up to ditch him for Nico Hulkenberg are true. Still, he was strong all race long, executed a decent, if tyre-assisted, pass on Rosberg to take sixth place, and just maybe did enough to convince one of the other teams yet to completely rubber-stamp their 2012 line-up that he is worth a punt for another season.
Moment of the Race
Lap 30 - One of the least-exciting lead changes of the whole year, but the crucial one for the race. Vettel had already affirmed over the radio that he was not going to start fighting wheel-to-wheel with his team mate as and when the Australian caught him, and he certainly didn't do that. His pace either side of the move despite his ailing car highlighted how much it pained the win-harder to hand over a victory, but in the end it was a no-brainer.
Quote of the Race
"It was good to have a nice chat with Felipe after the race. I have great respect for him and I'm already looking forward to racing him again next year." - Lewis Hamilton ends his feud with Felipe Massa like all good feud end, with a slightly awkward hug and some platitudes from either side.
Patronise F1's Brazilian GP Coverage
Race Preview - Brazilian Grand Prix
Minute-by-minute reports:
Free Practice 1
Free Practice 2
Free Practice 3
Brazilian GP Qualifying
Brazilian GP Race
Session reports:
FP1 - Webber quickest in first Brazil practice
FP2 - Hamilton sneaks ahead in super-tight FP2
FP3 - Vettel ahead in final Brazilian practice
Qualifying - Vettel seals record-breaking Brazil pole
Race - Happy Webber hits top gear to beat Vettel
Post-race coverage:
Five talking points from the Brazilian GP
Fifth Column - Brazil
The Results
| 2011 Brazilian Grand Prix | ||||
| Race Result after 71 Laps | ||||
| Pos | Driver | Car | Time | Grid |
| 1 | Mark Webber (Aus) | Red Bull RB7 Renault | 1hr32:17.464 | 2 |
| 2 | Sebastian Vettel (Ger) | Red Bull RB7 Renault | +16.983 | 1 |
| 3 | Jenson Button (Gbr) | McLaren MP4-26 Mercedes | +27.638 | 3 |
| 4 | Fernando Alonso (Spa) | Ferrari 150˚ Italia | +35.048 | 5 |
| 5 | Felipe Massa (Bra) | Ferrari 150˚ Italia | +1:06.733 | 7 |
| 6 | Adrian Sutil (Ger) | Force India VJM04 Mercedes | +1 Lap | 8 |
| 7 | Nico Rosberg (Ger) | Mercedes W02 | +1 Lap | 6 |
| 8 | Paul di Resta (Gbr) | Force India VJM04 Mercedes | +1 Lap | 11 |
| 9 | Kamui Kobayashi (Jap) | Sauber C30 Ferrari | +1 Lap | 16 |
| 10 | Vitaly Petrov (Rus) | Lotus Renault R31 | +1 Lap | 15 |
| 11 | Jaime Alguersuari (Spa) | Toro Rosso STR6 Ferrari | +1 Lap | 13 |
| 12 | Sebastien Buemi (Swi) | Toro Rosso STR6 Ferrari | +1 Lap | 14 |
| 13 | Sergio Perez (Mex) | Sauber C30 Ferrari | +1 Lap | 17 |
| 14 | Rubens Barrichello (Bra) | Williams FW33 Cosworth | +1 Lap | 12 |
| 15 | Michael Schumacher (Ger) | Mercedes W02 | +1 Lap | 10 |
| 16 | Heikki Kovalalinen (Fin) | Lotus T128 Renault | +2 Laps | 19 |
| 17 | Bruno Senna (Bra) | Lotus Renault R31 | +2 Laps | 9 |
| 18 | Jarno Trulli (Ita) | Lotus T128 Renault | +2 Laps | 20 |
| 19 | Jerome d'Ambrosio (Bel) | Virgin MVR-02 Cosworth | +3 Laps | 23 |
| 20 | Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) | HRT F111 Cosworth | +3 Laps | 22 |
| Not Classified | ||||
| Vitantonio Liuzzi (Ita) | HRT F111 Cosworth | 61 Laps - Alternator | 21 | |
| Lewis Hamilton (Gbr) | McLaren MP4-26 Mercedes | 46 Laps - Gearbox | 4 | |
| Pastor Maldonado (Ven) | Williams FW33 Cosworth | 26 Laps - Spin | 18 | |
| Timo Glock (Ger) | Virgin MVR-02 Cosworth | 21 Laps - Wheel | 24 | |
| Fastest Lap | ||||
| Mark Webber (Aus) | Red Bull RB7 Renault | 1:42.612 |
| Drivers Standings | Constructors Standings | |||||
| Pos | Driver | Pts | Pos | Constructor | Pts | |
| 1 | Vettel | 392 | 1 | Red Bull Renault | 650 | |
| 2 | Button | 270 | 2 | McLaren Mercedes | 497 | |
| 3 | Webber | 258 | 3 | Ferrari | 375 | |
| 4 | Alonso | 257 | 4 | Mercedes | 165 | |
| 5 | Hamilton | 227 | 5 | Renault | 73 | |
| 6 | Massa | 118 | 6 | Force India Mercedes | 69 | |
| 7 | Rosberg | 89 | 7 | Sauber Ferrari | 44 | |
| 8 | Schumacher | 76 | 8 | Toro Rosso Ferrari | 41 | |
| 9 | Sutil | 42 | 9 | Williams Cosworth | 5 | |
| 10 | Petrov | 37 | ||||
| 11 | Nick Heidfeld | 34 | ||||
| 12 | Kobayashi | 30 | ||||
| 13 | Di Resta | 27 | ||||
| 14 | Alguersuari | 26 | ||||
| 15 | Buemi | 15 | ||||
| 16 | Perez | 14 | ||||
| 17 | Barrichello | 4 | ||||
| 18 | Senna | 2 | ||||
| 19 | Maldonado | 1 |
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