It must have been a huge relief for Mark Webber. He finally won the final race of the season at the Interlagos circuit in the Formula1 Grand Prix of Brazil. Mark Webber has struggled through out this season in qualifying and in the races while his teammate Sebastian Vettel in the same Red Bull Racing car broke records for pole positions and became the youngest two time F1 World Champion four races ago after dominating the season from the front of the grid. While it is true that Mark Webber finally did get his win for 2011 in the final race, there was also a stroke of good fortune involved with Sebastian Vettel’s car developing gearbox problems and forcing Vettel to surrender the lead that he had established over Webber. Vettel however managed to hold on to second position while a fighting Jenson Button in the McLaren out drove and out foxed Fernando Alonso in the Ferrari to take third position. Alonso finished fourth while his teammate Felipe Massa in the other Ferrari finished fifth. Sixth place went to Sahara Force India’s Adrian Sutil while his rookie teammate Paul Di Resta finished in eighth. The meat in the Force India sandwich was Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes and ninth and tenth were taken by Kamui Kobayashi in the Sauber and Vitaly Petrov in the Renault car. Petrov’s teammate Bruno Senna had a disappointing home race after he collided with Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes and both found their race compromised after that with Schumacher finishing in fifteenth position while Senna finished seventeenth. In what may have been his last F1 race (though he is not accepting it) Rubens Barrichello in the Williams finished in fourteenth place.
With this race the F1 2011 season comes to an end and all the teams head for a well deserved winter break before testing commences in February of 2012. For 2012 the present Team Lotus becomes Caterham F1 team and will continue to use Renault engines, while the present Renault team will become Lotus and will use Renault engines while Williams F1 will move from Cosworth to Renault engines to revive an iconic partnership. Renault will now be an engine supplier only and will no longer be a constructor. Red Bull Racing is the other constructor who will be using Renault engines for some more time after having won two world championships with them. The Virgin team will become Marussia F1 team with the Russian car maker taking control of the team. The Marussia F1 team and Team HRT will continue to use Cosworth engines while Sahara Force India and McLaren will use the Mercedes Benz engines as usual apart from Mercedes GP. Ferrari will continue to supply engines to Scuderia Toro Rosso and the Sauber F1 team.