Highlights
Series
Explore
It's hard to imagine how the 2008 championship fight could possibly have come to a more exciting conclusion. The sight of both the Ferrari and McLaren teams celebrating wildly in the Interlagos pitlane, before the former squad realised its jubilation was premature, was proof of that.
The main reason it took until the final corner of the very last lap of the year for Lewis Hamilton to seal the championship was because this season provided so much inconsistency amongst the frontrunners. It was hard to reconcile the Hamilton who was in a league of his own in the wet in Monaco and Britain, who turned a seemingly impossible situation into a Hockenheim victory, and who dealt with the pressure of Shanghai so superbly, with the same man that crashed in the Montreal pitlane and threw away the Japanese GP within yards of the start.
Similarly, Massa looked out of control in Australia, Malaysia and Britain, yet could not have been more composed amid the intensity of Interlagos.
Despite these fluctuations and lapses, both contenders did enough to prove themselves worthy winners of a title fight that contained little of last year's rancour. The Spa penalty controversy and Fuji tangles led to a few differences of opinion, but nothing like the acrimony that characterised 2007.
