I’m very much looking forward to the end of the season. It’s been a really dramatic season, with so many twists and turns, so we just don’t know what’s going to happen this weekend.
Lewis Hamilton is right when he says that it’s different to last year. He’s more experienced and he doesn’t have a team-mate who’s giving him all sorts of grief. He’s also been extending his lead in recent races rather than seeing it shrink. So he’s much better-equipped to win it.
There are a few potential spanners which could be thrown in to the works. Felipe Massa needs to win or finish in second place and that’s within his capabilities. He has always done very well there. He’s been on pole in Sao Paulo for the past two years.
However, the one thing in Lewis’ favour is that there’s a very good chance of rain and the McLaren has been the better car in the rain this year. Having said that, rain does lead to unpredictable races.
But if it’s wet, Lewis should be able to disappear up the road – even though he doesn’t actually need to do that; he can just coast around and follow the Ferraris home.
The only other thing that could make things interesting, though, is the constructors’ championship.
All Lewis should be concentrating on is the drivers’ championship but the constructors’ championship is also up for grabs and that’s very important to the teams.
McLaren have an 11-point deficit to Ferrari at the moment and Ron Dennis would quite like Lewis to go out and win the race, and for Heikki Kovalainen to finish high up the standings.
So, I think McLaren will be putting pressure on Lewis to win at Interlagos but all he’ll want to do is clinch the championship by staying out of trouble. So that could confuse the issue a tad for him.
But all Lewis needs to do is to keep calm. It ought to be easy for Hamilton in a McLaren to finish fifth in the Brazilian GP.
Of course, if one little thing goes wrong with the car and the pressure comes on, then it will be very interesting to see how he reacts......