This Formula 1 is bizarre: 19 Grands Prix behind it, more than 5.700 kilometers covered by a band of frantic to dizzying averages, and everything will be decided in the last 300 km of undulations full of pitfalls of the Interlagos circuit, a suburb of São Paulo in the Brazil. This is to award the Drivers' title: the Constructors' title is firmly in the pocket of Red Bull, and for the third year in a row. A figure that speaks for itself and which gives credit to the long-range project of the Austrian bibiologist Dieter Mateschitz (in 2004 Red Bull was called Jaguar, and despite the blazon its balance in the Grands Prix had been close to zero) and to its working group, with emphasis above all on the technical genius Adrian Newey who had already demonstrated his exceptional value in teams such as Leyton House, Williams, McLaren. And that Ferrari itself, incidentally, almost made false papers to make sure, bumping its nose against the resistance of the English coach and his family, too fond of the traditions of the Channel.
The point is very clear as to why a long and branded competition with a higher specific weight than a Red Bull has reached the last episode to assign the most valuable title. At the start of the championship, Red Bull was not superior, contradicting a clear tradition in the past two seasons. Merit or fault of some regulatory changes that had won some of the best weapons of the two-year period 2010-2011. Then the recovery, through an authentic re-interpretation of the single-seater carried out from race to race. And not without some technical reliability problems blamed more on the Renault engineer (the famous alternator…) than on the team, we arrived at the sensational domination put on the track from the end of September onwards, with Sebastian Vettel winning a GP in bursts as for at least the first half of the season the World had never authorized.
At the end of September, however, Fernando Alonso was at the top of the championship. Whose Ferrari clearly wasn't, and isn't, the best single-seater of the year. He had improved a lot, in the May-June period, reaching the point of collecting his third victory on July 22 in Germany, perhaps the clearest success (that is: without the rain or bad luck or other people's mistakes) of the red season. From there, however, the development of the F2012 has been embalmed. And the efforts made in October were of little use, with the Maranello team once again hanging their heads in the wind tunnel (someone else's, because the Cavallino one seems obsolete) and in the workshop. But particularly in the races in the East between the end of September and the end of October, Ferrari and Alonso slipped further and further in terms of outright performance. Given this, exalted in qualifying, where the Spanish champion suffered more and more and with the curious concomitance of a recovery, instead, of his teammate Felipe Massa who, after more than two years in the shadows, even embarrassing, recently returned to level values.
But now we are at today. We are in Interlagos, the Brazilian GP, on the track on Saturday at 17pm for a particularly important qualifying session and on Sunday at the same time for the race which will assign the 63rd Drivers' title in the history of the world championship. Vettel or Alonso? Mathematics, technical data, probability calculation and even the cabal direct the answer towards the German champion: the youngest world champion in history (2010, when he snatched this particular scepter from Lewis Hamilton who had just paraded it from Alonso two years earlier) and today one step away from becoming the youngest tri-champion ever, overshadowing the fame of people such as Fangio and Stewart, Brabham and Lauda, Piquet and Prost and Senna… All to reiterate that Vettel is not just anyone; but neither is Alonso, who literally worked miracles this year. His Ferrari, as widely said, is a step backwards. But he's never done anything wrong, he's always squeezed 101% out of a car that was sometimes out of breath while managing to motivate a team that has returned to levels of excellence this year in terms of strategy, tactics, responsiveness and precision.
All this, however, may not be enough for Interlagos. Because arriving at least fourth Vettel will be champion anyway, whatever Alonso's performance will be. And it is hard to see how this objective can escape him, unless there are external coincidences such as macroscopic errors, by him or by the team, or momentous events in terms of weather. In this sector, however, there could be those rains that in Brazil have already given apocalyptic scenarios in the past, sources of irreparable mistakes at almost every corner, at every braking. Indeed, the forecasts speak of showers for Sunday, which in those parts easily turn into storms. And precisely because of this characteristic of Interlagos in late autumn (almost southern summer) the last championship performance has already given us scene reversals of this type…
