Brazilian GP Preview: Facts & Stats

Formula One reaches its season finale this weekend at Interlagos, as the title goes to a last-round decider for only the second time this decade.

The last time it happened was in 2003, when Michael Schumacher needed just one point to clinch the title. This time the tables are turned, and it is his rival Fernando Alonso who needs that precious point to clinch back-to-back titles.

The Interlagos circuit first appeared on the championship calendar in 1973, after hosting a non-championship event a year earlier. Ronnie Peterson was on pole for the first championship race in 1973, one of nine pole positions for the Swede that year, smashing Jim Clark's record of six, set ten years previously.

Lotus teammate Emerson Fittipaldi thrilled the home crowd with victory, as he did in the 1974 race, but in 1975 he could only finish second to Sao Paulo native Carlos Pace, who won for Brabham. It was a historic result, as Brazilians had never previously finished 1-2 in a Formula One race.

Pace didn't have it his own way, as Jean-Pierre Jarier led most of the race in his Shadow-Ford until a mechanical failure. Jarier had the consolation of holding the fastest lap in both the '75 and '76 races. This proved an anomaly, as a Shadow never set a fastest lap at any other race track in F1.

Interlagos opened the season for the first time in 1976, although it would not do so again until 1994. James Hunt took his first career pole position, but reigning world champion Niki Lauda eased to victory. Although Jarier again dropped out, teammate Tom Pryce tied his career best with third place, using Shadow's good Interlagos set-up to his advantage. It would be his last podium finish, as he was killed at Kyalami in 1977.

Lauda's win in 1976 was the only Interlagos win for a non-South American until 1979, when Jacques Laffite won for Ligier. Carlos Reutemann won for Ferrari in 1977, and he also won in 1978, when the venue shifted to the flat and featureless Jacarepagua circuit in Rio de Janeiro.

This victory was very significant, as it was the first F1 triumph for the Michelin tyre company, which makes its last appearance this weekend. Ironically, Michelin's first win was as a supplier to Ferrari, who have been the sole rival to the Michelin teams in recent years.

Emerson Fittipaldi was second in 1978 in the Fittipaldi-Ford, the team's best ever result. In a career path almost identical to that followed by Jacques Villeneuve many years later, Fittipaldi quit the McLaren team at the end of 1975, one year after winning the title with them, joined a team essentially built around him, but scored only two podiums in five seasons with them.

After a one-year hiatus, Interlagos was back in 1979, and it was the scene of utter dominance by the Ligier team, who qualified and finished 1-2 with Jacques Laffite and Patrick Depailler at the wheel. Laffite had also won the opening round in Buenos Aires from pole position, as Ligier led every lap of both races.

What happened thereafter was one of the biggest dips in form ever seen in F1, as Laffite only scored four more times in '79, and despite being 17 points ahead of Ferrari's Jody Scheckter after Brazil, he was 24 points behind him by the end of the season.

Renault's only win at Interlagos as a constructor was in 1980, when Rene Arnoux took his maiden victory, and only the second-ever win for the team. A 21-year-old upstart named Elio de Angelis caused a surprise by taking second place in the Essex Lotus, becoming the youngest man ever to score a podium - beating Bruce McLaren's record from Aintree 1959. To this day, only Ralf Schumacher (Argentina 1997), Robert Kubica (Italy 2006) and Fernando Alonso (Malaysia 2003) have beaten de Angelis's mark.

The Brazilian GP moved permanently to Rio de Janeiro in 1981, consigning the 7.9km majesty of Interlagos to the history books. Jacarepagua was to prove no less interesting from a stats point of view, as Carlos Reutemann took his third Brazilian GP win in usually wet conditions.

The Argentine infuriated his Williams employers by refusing to concede his win to his reigning champion teammate Alan Jones, who completed the fourth consecutive 1-2 finish for the team. Riccardo Patrese was third for Arrows, one of only eight podium places the team earned in 24 years of F1 racing, while Marc Surer scored his and Ensign's only ever fastest lap.

Reutemann lost out by a single point to Nelson Piquet in the 1981 title battle, and confirming his reputation as an enigma, he decided to quit F1 immediately after retiring from the 1982 Brazilian GP, a few weeks before his 40th birthday.

This wasn't the only major off-track news from the weekend, as Nelson Piquet and Keke Rosberg were disqualified from first and second for running water tanks, allegedly used to cool the brakes. These could be topped up after the race, circumventing the minimum weight rules. This was especially harsh on Piquet, who had fainted on the podium due to exhaustion in the punishing heat.

Piquet and Rosberg again finished 1-2 on the road in 1983, and again Rosberg was disqualified, this time for a push start. In a highly unusual move, the following cars were not promoted up the order, and nobody was awarded second place. Rosberg had taken pole position in the Williams-Ford, and it was the last time a normally-aspirated car would take pole before turbos were banned, at the end of 1988.

It was an all-Italian front row for the 1984 race, as Elio de Angelis and Michele Alboreto were quickest in qualifying. This was something that would not happen again for 21 years, until Giancarlo Fisichella took pole alongside Jarno Trulli at Albert Park in 2005. Alain Prost won the race, but only his replacement at Renault, Derek Warwick, retired from the lead with 10 laps remaining - the Englishman was destined to never win in his 146-race career.

Also in the retirements column that day was 24-year-old British F3 champion Ayrton Senna, who was making his F1 debut in the Toleman. He would score points in his second and third races, and finish on the podium three times in 1984, something Toleman never did either before, or afterwards.

Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna finished 1-2 in 1986, emulating Pace and Fittipaldi's feat from the 1975 race, while Alain Prost opened his championship defence with victory in the 1987 race. He slumped to fourth in the championship by the season's end, making this the last time a reigning champion won the first race of a season but failed to defend the title - assuming Fernando Alonso is not pipped at the post for this year's crown.

Rio 1988 saw the last attempt to qualify a non-F1 chassis for a Grand Prix. The new Dallara team appeared with their 3087 chassis, originally for use in F3000, as their F1 design was not yet ready. Unsurprisingly, Alex Caffi failed to qualify. In the race itself, pole-sitter Ayrton Senna stalled his McLaren on the grid and had to start from pitlane. However, as he switched to the spare car, he broke the rules and was black flagged after climbing from last place to second by half-distance.

Jacarepagua held its last F1 race in 1989, and it would prove hugely significant. Ferrari appeared with the revolutionary 640 chassis, equipped with the first semi-automatic gearbox. It has proved so unreliable that Nigel Mansell had booked a flight back to Europe that departed while the race was supposed to be still taking place, but to his (and everyone else's) surprise, it not only completed the race, but it was good enough to take victory, defeating the McLarens, which had only been beaten once in 1988.

Nigel Mansell wins for Ferrari in Rio © LAT

Mauricio Gugelmin achieved the finest result of his career by taking third in the Adrian Newey-designed March, while Johnny Herbert stunned onlookers by taking fourth on his Grand Prix debut for Benetton, seven months after nearly losing his legs in an F3000 crash at Brands Hatch.

The race returned to Interlagos in 1990, on a shorter variant of the original circuit, the lack of trackside grass verges being a pointer to the amount of work that had been carried out. Alain Prost won for Ferrari, becoming the first man ever to win the same event on six different occasions.

By now, Senna had driven in his home event seven times without ever winning, but he finally conquered Brazil in 1991, in truly dramatic fashion. Having been 40 seconds ahead of Riccardo Patrese, he found himself stuck in gear with just a handful of laps remaining. With Patrese seemingly about to inherit the win, a freak rainstorm meant Senna was able to cling on by less than three seconds at the end.

As good as he was, Senna was no match for the all-conquering Williams FW14B in 1992 and couldn't get within 2.199 seconds of Mansell's pole time. The Englishman took another dominant win, one of his record five-in-a-row to open a season (something that Schumacher emulated in 2004).

Rain again helped deliver Senna to victory in 1993, when a storm sent Alain Prost off the road in 1993 and brought out the Safety Car - its first appearance in an F1 race since the 1973 Canadian GP. Senna clinched the win by passing Damon Hill, who was only making his fourth F1 start. It was McLaren's 100th victory, becoming the second team to reach that mark, after Ferrari (France 1990).

The Brazilian GP opened the 1994 season, and it saw the return of refueling, banned since 1983, and the first race since the banning of driver aids such as active suspension, traction control and so on. Michael Schumacher upset the form book by beating Senna at his own backyard, with Senna spinning out of his last home race in an effort to keep up. Schumacher eventually won by over a lap, the widest margin of victory in any race since Austria 1986.

Schumacher repeated the win in 1995, but only after he and second-place David Coulthard were disqualified for fuel irregularities and then reinstated on appeal (although their teams were stripped of the constructors points).

Pedro Diniz crawled around to tenth position, seven laps down, on the debut appearance for him and his Forti Corse team. Amazingly, that remains the best ever result for a Brazilian in his first appearance on home soil since Emerson Fittipaldi won the first event in 1973.

The 1997 race saw third-placed Olivier Panis score Alain Prost's first podium as a team owner, in only the second start for the Prost team. More significantly, it was to prove the first of many podiums for Bridgestone, which had entered the sport full-time at the beginning of the season.

Olivier Panis (Prost JS45 Mugen Honda) finished third in 1997 © LAT

Mika Hakkinen won at Interlagos in both 1998 and 1999, on the way to his world championships, while Schumacher did the same in 2000. Jenson Button would carve his name into history that day by becoming the youngest man ever to score a world championship point. At 20 years, 2 months and 7 days, he was two months younger than Ricardo Rodriguez was at the 1962 Belgian Grand Prix, and he still holds the record.

David Coulthard won the 2001 race after a terrific battle with Michael Schumacher in the late race rain, while Nick Heidfeld scored his maiden podium finish for Sauber, a team that withdrew from the 2000 event after a spate of rear wing failures in practice.

However, most remember 2001 for the exploits of Juan Pablo Montoya, who in only his third race audaciously passed Schumacher for the lead on lap 3, and looked set to end a four-year winless streak for Williams, until he was punted out by Jos Verstappen's lapped Arrows.

Despite being a four-time winner at Brazil and a 68-time pole-sitter in F1, Michael Schumacher's only ever pole position at Interlagos came in 2002. His victory in the race gave him the 100th podium finish of his career, making him only the second driver (after Alain Prost) to chalk up a century of appearances on the rostrum.

The 2003 Brazilian GP stands out as one of the strangest races in history. Tyre rules that restricted each manufacturer to one type of wet tyre meant they were inadequately equipped to deal with the huge amount of standing water, and several cars crashed at the Curva Do Sol.

Most notable among the casualties was Michael Schumacher, for whom it was the only retirement in a sequence of 44 races that began in 2001. When Rubens Barrichello retired from the lead (just as he had in 2002), it meant Ferrari had their first point-less weekend since the 1999 European GP.

After a huge crash involving Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso brought the race to a premature end, Kimi Raikkonen was incorrectly declared the winner. When the standings were adjusted, Giancarlo Fisichella's Jordan had won the race, giving the Italian his maiden victory and the Silverstone-based team their fourth and final win, in their 200th start.

The race featured five safety car periods, which remains an all-time record. Thanks to that, and combined with the heavy rain, Heinz-Harald Frentzen went the distance without pitting, one of only two occurrences since refueling was reintroduced in 1994 - the other one being Mika Salo in the wet Monaco GP of 1997.

Juan Pablo Montoya (McLaren Mercedes MP4-20) won the 2005 Grand Prix of Brazil © LAT

Having traditionally been among the opening rounds of the year since it was first added to the calendar, the Brazilian GP shifted to being the final race in 2004. It saw Juan-Pablo Montoya join storied names such as Alan Jones, Keke Rosberg and Nigel Mansell, by winning his final race for Williams. It remains their last F1 win to date.

Following him home that day was McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen, and they again finished 1-2 in last year's race, although this time Raikkonen was Montoya's teammate. This remains McLaren's only 1-2 finish in the last 111 races, stretching back to Austria 2000.

Such statistics were overshadowed by Fernando Alonso's third place finish, which made him the youngest ever world champion. He can also become the second youngest winner on Sunday, as he will be 187 days younger than Fittipaldi was on the day he won the 1972 title.