Grapevine: Paddock Life - Interlagos edition

And add to that mix the fact that Brazil's own Felipe Massa had every chance of taking a victory, and all the ingredients were there for a truly spectacular weekend.

In fact, you would have thought that having a Brazilian driver on pole and battling for victory would have guaranteed a sole focus of attention from the fanatical Sao Paulo fans.

But even Massa's great end to the season was not enough to divert any of the complete devotion that the fans showed to their new hero: Lewis Hamilton.

The Brazilians have taken to Hamilton's success this year, and it was clear from the T-shirt sellers outside and inside the Interlagos circuit that the fans only wanted to wear the colours of one man.

By race morning, all official Hamilton T-shirts had sold out and the fans reserved their biggest cheer for him when he passed on track.

And if we were to report what they were chanting at Fernando Alonso, we'd probably have a fair few Spanish lawyers on our back...

If Hamilton's T-shirts had sold out, then perhaps some fans could have asked F1 Racing's editor Matt Bishop if they could buy some of his traditional loud shirts as he showed them off for the final time at Interlagos.

Bishop has made a habit of wearing extremely loud colours in the paddock throughout his tenure at the helm of F1 Racing, but all that is about to end.

With his imminent switch to McLaren to head up their communications division, Bishop will have to return to the paddock in Australia wearing slightly less exuberant team colours.

As a farewell present, Kangaroo TV presented Bishop with a garish news print shirt - which was too outrageous even for him to wear on race day.

Renault press officer Bradley Lord also found himself wearing something not too nice on Sunday night, at the end of what was his last race with the team.

Over the Interlagos weekend, the Renault caterers had carefully saved up all the waste food ready for the team's mechanics to pounce.

Sure enough, Lord found himself tied to a tyre trolley and covered in all the team's slops. He smelled wonderful afterwards!

Local man Rubens Barrichello may have had a fairly miserable time in 2007, and knew that he would have little to cheer about at his home Grand Prix, but that did not stop him trying to lift spirits at Honda Racing ahead of the weekend.

On the Wednesday before the race, Barrichello hired a go-kart track in Sao Paulo and invited Honda Racing team members to show off their skills on track.

It was no surprise to see the bunch of professional drivers present make it through the heats to the final - with Super Aguri's Anthony Davidson pipping Barrichello himself to ultimate glory.

But what did cause a stir was when Barrichello presented all of those present with a specially engraved iPod Nano - as a way of saying thanks for all their efforts during the course of a difficult season.

And furthermore, Barrichello also told the best non-professional home, Honda truckie Paul Benstead, that he would be given his helmet after the race on Sunday.

The race of course marked the last for Honda's recalcitrant RA107 - and Jenson Button's mechanics gave him every possibility of giving the car the perfect send off at the end of the race.

As he climbed into the cockpit for the RA107's final race, Button had found that the mechanics had taped a cigarette lighter there - just in case he needed some encouragement about what to do with the car.