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Button wins through

Well, at last, Jenson Button has done it. For the third year in succession, the Brazilian Grand Prix delivered a Formula One World Champion title and, along with it, a plateful of action and drama.

From the first rain-soaked practice sessions, we were pretty sure we were going to be once again treated to one of those unpredictable, chaotic and frankly bonkers, Brazilian Grand Prix weekends. When the 50km-wide tropical storm blew into Interlagos on Saturday afternoon bringing torrential rain, it guaranteed it!

I cannot remember ever, in more than a decade of F1 commentaries, a qualifying session that meant I had to spend nearly three hours on the microphone. Nor a scenario in which the championship contender was set to start the race in fourteenth place, with one of his main rivals in sixteenth and his other rival on pole position!

Of course, being Brazil there was comedy as well as drama. On Saturday, TV technicians rushed around with polythene bags, desperately trying to keep equipment dry as roofs leaked in the downpour. In the press room, scribes writing for the world's newspapers and magazines beavered away, surrounded by mops and buckets!

There couldn't have been a greater contrast between stormy Saturday and the blue skies on Sunday afternoon. But as in previous years, the tortuous Interlagos track gave us an action-packed race, plenty of drama and, ultimately a new champion.

Home hero Rubens Barrichello, delighted the ranks of fans by converting his pole position into an early race lead. His lightly-fueled strategy was to build sufficient lead to take off the pressure at the first round of pit stops.

Unfortunately for the Brazilian, chaos in the pack behind him meant he would be thwarted by the intervention of the safety car. The initial clash between Jarno Trulli and the Force India of Adrian Sutil wasn't too much of a problem.

Then Sutil spun back onto the track into the path of a hapless Fernando Alonso. The explosion of debris and three laps behind the safety car would ultimately end Barrichello's hopes for victory and his chance of beating Button to the title.

As the safety car circulated, there was more drama in the pits when Heikki Kovalainen's McLaren ‘did a Massa' and pulled out into the pitlane with the refuelling hose still attached. Just as with Massa's incident in Singapore last year, it was a team rather than a driver error, but this time it was even more spectacular.

Fuel sprayed from the McLaren was briefly ignited by the following car, Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari. Amazingly, both cars were able to rejoin the race, but Kimi's race had already been spoiled when a bid to pass second pace man Mark Webber had forced him to drop back with a wrecked front wing, while an early contact with Sutil had also cause the Ferrari to puncture a tyre. It was that sort of opening lap!

The safety car period was bad news for Barrichello, but equally a source of joy for Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel, whose Brawn and Red Bull were able to close up on the leaders. As the cars filtered through the race pit stops, the lightly-fuelled Barrichello lost his advantage to eventual race winner Mark Webber and the BMW Sauber of Robert Kubica.

With ten laps remaining Button meanwhile was happy to tuck into sixth place behind former title rival Vettel. That should be enough to give the Briton the champion's title, but this being Brazil, who would make a firm prediction?

As it turned out, it was Barrichello, perennially unlucky at his home track, who was set to be robbed even of a chance of the podium.

An attempt to parry an attack from the hard charging Lewis Hamilton resulted in a punctured tyre and an unscheduled third pitstop. As the Brazilian limped home eighth, it was left to Webber to celebrate victory and to Button to cruise home fifth to claim a hard-won and worthy World Championship title.

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