A close run thing

Brazil was without doubt the most amazing world championship finale we've ever seen, and it's still hard to quite believe that the race unfolded in the way it did.

We'd known for a fortnight that if Felipe Massa won, Lewis Hamilton had to finish fifth to secure the title. But who would have bet on just such an outcome transpiring?

"It was a challenging race, a very challenging race," said Ron Dennis. "But a race where we just did what we had to do to win, and that was the most important thing for us, to win the world championship. That's what we set out to do. The last two laps required a lot of discipline..."

Martin Whitmarsh echoed that last sentiment, but admitted that it was not that straightforward. Focussing on coming fifth - and not worrying about the usual main opposition up ahead - was not an easy adjustment for the team and driver to make.

"Throughout the whole race we were determined not to put ourselves in a position where we took any risks," said Martin. "I think it was difficult for our team and our psyche to race for fifth place. I have to say it wasn't a very enjoyable experience in a way. But I think we got it right, we made the right decisions throughout the race. It could easily have gone terribly wrong for us. I'm delighted for everybody that worked so hard, and for Lewis obviously, that we got it right in the end."

McLaren left nothing to chance, as Dennis revealed on Saturday when he reeled off a list of what the team had done over and above their usual race preparations. Equally, he was fairly dismissive of Massa's impressive pole lap. It was clear to all that Lewis was heavier, but Ron was convinced that the gap was so great that Ferrari was committed to stopping him three times, and the same went for Jarno Trulli. Ferrari insiders chuckled at such suggestions and pointed out that in fourth place Lewis was seriously exposed to first lap problems.

"There are two guys on the front who are on three-stop strategies, it's just fuel load," said Dennis. "Simple as that. You don't have the level of competitiveness that we had in qualifying one and qualifying two and suddenly lose it. We know how much fuel we put in the car, we know what the expected lap time is for that fuel load. And we were close to that time. So it's purely a different strategy.

"The whole thing is really reflective of what they have to do, what Massa has to do, and what we have to do. But a three-stop strategy gives you tremendous vulnerability to two things, rain and safety car. And our objective is to come in the first five. We knew that we wanted to eliminate those things.

"We think that obviously Toyota aren't a threat. Massa, we don't have to beat him, we can finish behind him. We have to avoid a first lap incident and run a disciplined race, and I think our strategy will become apparent to everybody. To go that light really puts you at a huge risk if it rains, a huge risk."

Dennis insisted that Massa risked getting caught in traffic after his first stop.

"From 10th back you've got everybody fuelled long and all of those guys are going to be ahead of anybody that has to stop in the early part of the race. And that's going to be a challenge to get past them.

"To try and get past people even on a circuit where you have the ability to overtake is just fraught with risk, so it's a complete risk assessment. We've run every single analysis, not just for two weeks but for longer as to what was the right thing to do. Whatever the outcome the decision we took was absolutely the right decision, we don't regret one moment of it.

"We're not going to have any sleepless nights. There's not much that we haven't provided for..."

In the end, however, the rain worked perfectly for Ferrari, in fact it ultimately hurt McLaren more. Funnily enough, I was with Ron when the rain came. With just under five minutes to go I stood next to him on the pit wall and, having surveyed the rapidly darkening skies, I pointed upwards.

"It's too late," he said. "They'll have to delay the start."

As if on cue, the rain came within seconds. It didn't start with a few drops, it just came down in torrents, almost like hail, as if someone had flicked a switch. Standing alongside us, Norbert Haug just grinned and shrugged his shoulders, barely able to believe the timing. By luck we were under a metal signalling platform and thus didn't get soaked, but the poor guys on the grid were drenched in the couple of minutes that the deluge lasted, as was the track of course.

The inevitable message came through that the start would be delayed because we had passed the five-minute window for changing tyres, and that prompted Ron to head back down to the grid to take a closer look at what was going on. The tension was extraordinary as crew members arrived with wet tyres and the sound of air hammers rattled around.

The safety car was driven to the front of the grid and for a few minutes there was the unwelcome prospect of a start behind it - which would have forced everyone into the compulsory choice of extreme wets. But thankfully race control told it to stand down and head back to the pit lane.

When the formation lap finally came, the drivers had just that one opportunity to gauge how wet it was. Robert Kubica, the only man to have gambled on dry tyres, soon realised that he'd made a hopeless decision, and came straight back in.

Given the circumstances, all the guys at the front did a great job on the first lap, considering their lack of knowledge of what to expect. There was a little kerfuffle at the back - David Coulthard was the unfortunate victim of a nudge from Nico Rosberg - but nobody did anything silly at the sharp end.

Then came the call for the safety car, which at least gave everyone a chance to enjoy four laps of relative calm as the track began to dry. Giancarlo Fisichella made the brilliant call to come in and take on dry tyres before rejoining the queue, a decision that propelled him into the top five when everyone else began stopping under green.

Spare a thought too for Kubica - had he gone to the grid on those dry tyres instead of pitting at the end of the formation lap, the safety car would have allowed him to make it through to the dry window right at the front of the field, certainly well ahead of Fisichella ended up. And unlike the Italian, he probably would have been able to hang on ahead of Hamilton, something that might have had significant consequences...

The fact that the track dried rapidly had two significant consequences. Firstly, it negated any fuel load advantage Hamilton had because everyone pitted well before they had used up their fuel loads, and secondly, timing his stop was an incredibly tough decision for the team. Too early and he was at risk on a track that was still marginal for dries. Too late and other drivers who took a gamble might sneak ahead and put his fifth place at risk. And the latter is exactly what happened as Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel got in front.

"We believed that we had a little bit of a heavier fuel load than some of the cars around us and in front of us," said Whitmarsh. "Because of the rain fall before the start of the race then that strategic advantage was negated, and then we put ourselves back into the grid without any advantage being ultimately derived from that. Knowing that you couldn't take any risks, you couldn't be pioneering and the first onto dries was tough."

"It's difficult to understand how it transpired to be so marginal," admitted McLaren engineering chief Paddy Lowe after the race. "But we took an approach where we were trying to cover out risks that ordinarily you wouldn't cover out.

"For instance, we all know that you can get completely screwed by a safety car, and whereas Felipe could really afford to take the gambles, because for him it was all or nothing, we were more in a covering mode. So we were planning to stop early at the first stop, although it never transpired because of the tyre change."

He conceded that, on reflection, Alonso and Vettel had got their timing just right.

"They made a better a call. But again that's the same formula, really. What you don't do is take any of those gambles. Stopping a lap earlier than what is a dead cert means that yes you might come out a hero, but you might come out a zero. We had to be conservative every step.

"Maybe we need to go back and rethink that, because at the end of the day it's been a very, very close grid at this race. The performance from first to last has been incredibly narrow. So in that context when you add these layers of safety measure, maybe it doesn't take much to push you back down to fifth, as you saw."

Stuck briefly in seventh, Lewis soon dealt with Trulli and Fisichella, and got back to where he needed to be. The team also knew that Vettel was short-filled to gain ground, and thus would be making an early second stop and in all likelihood would be destined for a third. He was in theory thus out of the picture. However, Lewis lost a lot of ground after that first stop when stuck behind others, so Vettel could not be entirely discounted.

It's easy to forget now that the most of last weekend's race was hardly gripping. There was tension of course, but it focused mainly on whether any of the top guys hit problems - and that included Alonso, Vettel and Raikkonen, since a retirement for any of them would have helped Hamilton's cause.

Everyone safely negotiated the second stops, with Massa coming in on lap 38 and Lewis two laps later. He had plenty of fuel still in his tank, but again it was a case of minimising risks.

"Certainly at the second stop we stopped early to cover Massa for a safety car risk," said Lowe. "That lost us a lot of time on the circuit. It was several laps early."

Now it was a question of a safe run to the flag for Lewis. Immediately after that stop sequence he was in his required fifth place, some 20s behind leader Massa and a huge margin ahead of Heikki Kovalainen in sixth, and thus had no threat from behind. Timo Glock was over 20s behind Lewis and, at this stage, seemingly not destined to be part of the story.

Vettel made his extra stop on lap 51, 20 to go. That put Lewis into a safe fourth, but the Toro Rosso emerged only 3s behind him. Suddenly he had something to watch in his mirrors, a little extra pressure that he didn't need, but arguably something which helped his focus at a point when it must have been hard for him. There was at least the safety net of knowing that if Vettel did get a bit aggressive, Lewis could cede fourth and still be champion.

And then the weather came into play.

Once again the skies darkened and on lap 57 there was a team radio message from BMW that rain would be coming in 'ten minutes', which meant around lap 65 - just six laps to the chequered flag.

Now things began to get really interesting. Two laps later there was another warning, this time of rain in five minutes. Then on lap 61 Williams told Nico Rosberg that it would rain in three minutes, and it would last for five minutes.

Forecasts haven't always been reliable this year, but this time Meteo France was pretty much spot on. The first signs came around lap 64, and the lapped Fisichella and Nick Heidfeld led the charge into the pits, even though there were initially just a few drops. As it became heavier, the rest came pouring in. Alonso, Raikkonen, Hamilton and Vettel held out until lap 66, and Massa stayed out one more lap. That looked like a huge risk, but he survived and emerged from the pits with his lead intact.

But one team remained aloof of all this pit activity - Toyota kept both Glock and Trulli out on dry tyres. It seemed like a mad decision, but then a funny thing happened - the rain eased almost as soon as it had started. To the degree that drivers who had made early stops for wets found that their tyres were soon losing their edge.

And incredibly the fastest man on the damp track was Glock. He was running in 1m18s, 4s off his dry pace, but one or two seconds quicker than even the front-runners were managing on wets. For all those days and hours of meticulous planning by the McLaren strategists, this just did not compute. As did the fact that the rain had not been as heavy as predicted. As Lowe admitted, "I was thinking how many more dice the gods are going to throw!"

And the reason Glock's strategy became of paramount importance was that on lap 69, Vettel passed Hamilton, fair and square. And that left Lewis in sixth with a little over two laps to go.

"We knew Glock was on dry tyres," said Dennis. "We saw the rain coming in on the radar. It came a little later than we anticipated. We just wanted to cover everybody. Glock was the enigma in the whole process, because we were playing a little bit with Vettel. With the two Ferraris and Alonso ahead we had to play with fourth and fifth all through the grand prix, turning the engine down, doing just what we had to do to win the world championship. The weather could have played a key role. I was saying to the weather forecaster, where's the rain, where's the rain?"

Fortunately for Lewis and McLaren, it did come, in the middle of the penultimate lap. It was just enough to put Glock off his stroke, and on that lap 70, he dropped from a 1m18s to a 1m28s. In fact he talked to the team about diving into the pits for a last ditch stop, as he realised that the final lap would be impossible. He was told not to bother because the pit lane was impassable as crews had already rushed from the garages to pit wall.

"It was only the last lap when I lost the time," Timo explained. "And they told me as well when I wanted to come in and change that the pits were blocked and there was no chance to come in any more. We couldn't do anything and we had to stay out. It would have made no sense because we would have lost even more time."

At the start of that epic last lap, Glock crossed the line a huge 13s ahead of Lewis, but as we saw, he'd just lost 10s. If he could maintain that time he would have stayed ahead, but the rain was getting heavier. Spooked by the odd moment as he tried to maintain control, he clearly realised that the priority was to bring it home and hope that he was still in the points.

All of this happened very quickly of course. The whole world was focused on Hamilton's vain attempts to keep pace with Vettel and not many people caught sight of Glock's lap 70 time of 1m28s - and the TV screens of course gave little indication that it had just got a lot wetter and that he might be struggling.

Lewis himself has admitted that he was totally concentrated on trying to get past Vettel, but after the race the McLaren management insisted that it was all under control and that they knew Glock would soon appear in Hamilton's sights. That may well be true, but it was very much a last minute thing, and Lewis did not have a lot of time to fully appreciate what was going on. As far as he was concerned, he was racing Vettel.

"We knew we were racing Glock, and that's what we were focusing on," said Whitmarsh. "We had the benefit of GPS, so you could see Glock struggling, you could see him coming. So you could predict and say you don't want to race with Vettel, you don't want to race with a young charger. But then you think 'OK, have we now blown it, are we going to crash?' We were racing Glock and we just didn't want to take any risks. Glock was in a completely different situation to us."

"The rain came," said Dennis. "It came, and then we saw Glock lose so much time in the middle sector, we knew we were going to get him. And we just did what we had to do."

Vettel and Lewis duly charged past Glock almost as if the Toyota man was standing still. In fact it was a miracle that he was still on the track at all. Afterwards, Vettel said he was stunned that his compatriot was able to go so quickly.

"I just drove my line where I know it's the safest way with dry tyres," said Timo. "And whether Lewis overtook me or not in that corner he would have overtaken me on the straight line, because I couldn't go flat out. I drove in fourth gear really slow to bring the car back home, and that's it."

There were dark conspiracies about him moving over and anyone who even countenanced such a thing quite frankly might as well go and follow beach volleyball or something, because they clearly don't know much about motor racing. Poor Timo had to face some pretty stupid questions post race from those who saw him as some kind of villain.

"You cannot think about the championship, I just drove my race," said the frustrated German. "I don't look for Lewis or somebody else and let somebody by or don't let somebody by. I drove my race and that's it.

"People who think I would decide the championship or I would let Lewis past, they have not a real idea about racing. First of all you cannot plan a race like this, and on the other side I drove my race."

On that last lap, and with no pressure from behind as he drove onto the pit straight, Timo ran a 1m44.7s. With the same car and same dry tyres, and the motivation of getting home to score a point in eighth, Trulli did a 1m44.8s. Case closed.

"Lewis absolutely kept his cool," said Whitmarsh. "We knew that Glock hadn't changed, we knew that he would be coming back towards us, you could predict that and project it. But until you actually do it, you're never as comfortable as you'd like it to be. It was tight, but great when it happened."

"There was no way that Glock was going to stay on the road in those conditions," said Dennis. "It had some risk, but in the end you have to call these things and get them right. It's a hero to zero sport, and fortunately we got it right today. I'm sure there are lots of people who have lots of opinions, but as far as we're concerned we came here determined to win the world championship, and we did."

It all worked out in the most amazing way, but others in the team admitted that at the time, it wasn't quite as clear cut as the management later suggested.

"We thought Glock would stop," said sporting director Dave Ryan. "We were absolutely amazed that he was able to do the lap times that he was doing. And we were worried. Very, very worried. And just lucky that it just rained enough that he couldn't hang on. We thought it would rain heavier sooner, to be fair. We were telling Lewis to race Vettel and then we were focussing on Glock, and the bugger didn't come in."

In the end, it all worked out, when so many things had gone wrong for Lewis. There are many ifs and buts that we could go back and examine over this extraordinary season, although that serves little purpose now.

But just consider for example what might have happened if Nico Rosberg hadn't punted DC at the start and triggered that initial safety car period. Because of the ensuing four laps of slow lappery, the race ultimately lasted some two and a half minutes longer than it otherwise would have.

Without that delay, the heavy shower that ultimately screwed Timo Glock and saved Hamilton's season would have come pretty much as world champion Felipe Massa drove into parc ferme. As the Brazilian said himself a dozen times on Sunday afternoon, that's racing.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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