Brazilian Grand Prix Betting: A season of mishaps and mistakes comes to the crunch

Formula One / David Croft / 24 October 2008 / Leave a Comment

Five Live Formula 1 commentator David Croft is hoping for a blemish-free race in the season's finale. But 2008 has been dominated by errors, crashes, retirements and more, so how likely is that?

So for the third season in a row the Formula 1 Drivers' Championship goes right to the wire.

Next week in Sao Paulo either Lewis Hamilton or Felipe Massa will become champion, thereby ending a season of controversy, penalties, errors and excitement. This has hardly been a vintage year for the sport, but let's face it there's been no shortage of entertainment along the way.

Whoever comes out on top will do so because they and their team handled the pressure best. Not perfectly, no team can claim a blemish free year, but better than the rest. In Japan, Lewis buckled and drowned in a sea of red mist at the start, in China he returned to glide home to victory leaving Massa trailing in his wake, a complete contrast but indicative of the season we've had.

On our 5-live Formula 1 show the Friday before the Chinese Grand Prix we put together a little mix of some of the key incidents of the seasons set to Queen's 'Under Pressure'. A fitting mix that included that pit lane crash in Canada, the poor start and crash into Fernando Alonso in Bahrain, the opening two laps in Japan along with the retirement in Malaysia with the Ferrari beached on the curb, the off at Ste Devot in Monaco, the pitlane incident in Valencia and fuel hose escapade in Singapore. Mistakes made by both Hamilton and Massa and there teams during the campaign, and boy have they all made plenty of errors.

So looking at the Brazilian Grand Prix logically it's the man or team that handles the pressure best that will come out on top, yes? Certainly that's what Lewis Hamilton believes. The British driver, talking after his Shanghai win, spoke of mental strength being key to the championship outcome and looking at the way he coped with the gamesmanship and negativity in the build-up to last week's race you'd argue that he has mental strength by the bucket load.

Interestingly, Hamilton also believes that by racing in front of his own fans in the final race Massa must deal with more pressure than usual. Nigel Mansell used to argue that the home fans were worth an extra second a lap but Lewis is of the opinion that the extra work that comes with a home race and the extra interest generated from a Brazilian driver racing for the title on his home tarmac could count against Massa.

What Hamilton does have in his favour of course is a handy seven-point lead over Massa. So fifth place is all he has to achieve to become Britain's ninth F1 World Champion. Sounds easy but so much could go wrong and, of course, last year it did. Seventh was the best Hamilton could manage and he lost the title to a Kimi Raikkonen who co-incidentally started the race seven points behind the McLaren driver.

History proves that you take nothing for granted. Renault boss Flavio Briatore for instance was asked this week who he'd put his money on for the title? To which he replied 'If I need to put money on anyone, then for sure I will put it on Hamilton.' Before adding 'But if I am asked to gamble then I will gamble on Massa because that will pay me more if I win'.

Should Flavio have a Betfair account or wish to open one he can back Lewis at [1.22] for the title or 'gamble' on Felipe at [5.6]. A price on the Brazilian that wouldn't put me off a little punt I must admit. Sure Ferrari have to find out why they were so uncompetitive in China and put that right. But so many things could conspire against Lewis in next week's race that he is no formality to become champion.

Of course, I hope that external influences such as reliability or an accident or heaven forbid a penalty from the stewards don't decide the outcome. As Lewis put it this week "Hopefully, it will be the best man who wins. I hope it is a straight race."

I can't agree more, Formula 1 needs the title and the race deciding when the cars cross the line, not months later and if it is a straight race than the atmosphere alone should generate a classic, Interlagos rarely disappoints.