It takes two days to fly to Brazil. That’s assuming your airline doesn’t sell you a couple of dodgy tickets to cancelled connecting flights. In my case, I spent more time in transit than the F1 teams did testing for this race. I started to feel like Tom Hanks from the movie, the Terminal. All this for one freaking race.

But this was no ordinary race. It was the season’s cliffhanger; Fernando Alonso and the Mild Seven Renault F1 team may have dominated the first half of the season leaving the championship as predictable as a Road Runner vs Coyote episode, but it was the fairy tale ending staged by the sentimental favorite, Michael Schumacher, and the incredible comeback from the late charging Ferrari team that really lit a match under the World Championship titles.

And it started to show.

The tension between the world champion and his team was becoming public. Alonso felt alone in his bid for the world championship; he had started to speak out about his team mate and his lack of support. Cracks started to appear and the Spanish media lapped it up. Their Zorro was in trouble; suffering under the tyranny of the rising Maranello regime; he was in motorsport’s equivalent of being tied to the stake ready to be hung, drawn and quartered by Señor Todt. It may have looked impossible for Michael to ride off into the sunset with an unprecedented 8th world championship, sure, but just like the movies, in F1, anything can happen. If there was even the slimmest chance, he would grab it.

And he did. The 37 year old Ferrari Ace set the pace during the pre qualifying, blowing the rest of the field back to the year 2004 when he won 12 out of the first 13 races. Ferrari had installed a super, all-or-nothing engine that was rumored to be 50 horsepower up on anyone else. Massa had found almost a full second around Fisichella’s best effort in a grid where six hundredths of a second equated to two grid positions. Winning was always going to be easy; Ferrari had found their form and had less to lose than the Renaults – they just needed to figure out how to eliminate that pesky little Spaniard. As it stood, it would take a DNF for Alonso and a win for Michael to reverse the spell.

The same naysayers that declared this championship over in Canada came out of the carbon fiber-work and proclaimed that Ferrari would now win it. David Coulthard even brought along his drop dead gorgeous fiancée to the paddock, and for once, nobody could care less. There was only one story brewing here and half a billion people waited feverishly for it to unravel itself live on Globo TV. Then it happened. Michael Schumacher fails to qualify in the final session; it was so theatrical, people stared in disbelief, waiting for the encore. The punch line. Anything. They had come this far – hell! I had come this far! We wanted a show. And we weren’t leaving without one.

Although a win from 10th seemed highly unlikely, what unraveled before us was probably the greatest display of driving the sport has ever seen since the days when Prost and Senna tried to share the same patch of road at over 280 km/h. Michael jumped three places to seventh on the opening lap. Alonso played it safe with the Toyota ahead and kept fourth. Nico Rosberg committed the cardinal sin of taking out his team mate on the opening lap, causing him to lose his front wing and plow into the wall by the end of lap 1, eventually deploying the safety car.

Once again it looked as though Michael had managed to seduce lady luck, climbing up three spots, bunching up the field and putting most of the slower drivers behind him; but hell hath no fury like a lady scorned, and I’m not sure what sweet nothings Michael had whispered to her underneath that specially commissioned Schuberth helmet of his with the names of each of his ninety-one Grand Prix victories incorporated into the design, but it all came crashing down on lap 6 after passing the embattled Giancarlo Fisichella.

The sport’s most decorated driver picked up a puncture, presumably from the carnage left behind by the over eager Rosberg, and limped back to the pits. Ross Brawn, Ferrari’s technical director, jumped in front of the cameras asking for Fisico’s head on a plate, claiming the Italian driver had purposely made contact with the Ferrari to destroy his championship challenge. Footage released later on revealed that there was indeed no contact between the two rival teams, but you couldn’t convince anyone wearing red of that. Emotions were on the boil.

Michael had dropped down to the back of the field. If it were a movie, it would have been directed by Sylvester Stallone. Overkill and over scripted. But this was live, raw and unadulterated. And I was watching it from the pits right next to one of Giancarlo Fisichella’s closest friends that claimed the unsung hero of this all was… guess who?

Massa was now leading his home race in only his first year at Ferrari. His specially designed, Brazilian green and yellow racing suit, that must have pissed off his title sponsor, Marlboro, to no end, was finally making sense. But his team mate was struggling. And two championships were hanging in the balance. If you look up the definition of bittersweet in the dictionary, you would probably see Jean Todt’s picture. But sure as the sun rises and Bernie gets his cut from it, Michael started to steal the show.
Lap by lap, the German picked his way through the field. By lap 28 he caught the first back marker. He worked his way through the riff-raff and pitted in on lap 47 in an incredible sixth place. His stop dropped him back to eighth, but he had enough V-Power to get all the way to the flag. Kubica disappeared into the pits for his second stop leaving Michael in 7th place and Barrichello in his sights. Rubens never saw him coming. And this time, he couldn’t blame team orders.
Michael was now back where he had been before the puncture, behind Fisi. There was a growing excitement simmering in the paddock. This is the part where the crowd would normally yell out, “Rocky! Rocky!” By now, Fisichella’s friend, who was still seated next to me, started to hyperventilate. He must have smoked 4 cigarettes in the nine laps Fisichella held on. He eventually lost consciousness when Fisico braked too late and went wide on to the grass. This, he declared, was obviously Fernando’s fault.
Target was now Kimi. By this stage, even some of the Renault staff were quietly cheering Michael’s heroic drive. The championship looked fairly safe, so they could afford to appreciate the greatness that was unfolding; turn by turn, we all knew that we were witnessing history in the making. But it wasn’t until Schumi wedged his Ferrari in between the pit wall and Kimi’s fast but fragile Mclaren on turns 1 and 2 that a large part of the world stopped breathing.
Centimeters separated the two cars from certain disaster. The incoming Ferrari driver and his retiring rival squeezed each other as they came into the blindingly quick entry to the Senna esses and put at least a hundred thousand people on their feet. It was the most butt-clenching move of an already breathtaking race. Anyone that thought that Kimi would gift wrap his position for his predecessor was rudely awakened.
With only a handful of laps left to go, Michael’s 15 year career had fallen about 10 minutes short of the perfect ending. You half expected Bernie to jump on the track and force the race into overtime. But it wasn’t to be. The world’s first billionaire athlete finished less than 6 seconds behind the Mclaren-bound Alonso, but left the sport with the fastest lap of the race and signed off in the same way he started back in Jordan in 1991, when he replaced the imprisoned Bertrand Gachot – with a resounding bang.
But behind this cloud lies a green and yellow lining, and if there was anyone that was secretly delighted with Michael’s misfortune, it was most likely his own team mate, Felipe Massa. The Brazilian had achieved in his first season with Ferrari what his compatriot, Rubens, failed to do during his entire 5 years with the dominating Scuderia squad – win a home race. Not since Ayrton Senna crossed the finish line in 1993 has a Brazilian been able to step up to the top of the Carlos Pace circuit podium. Until now.
Ferrari, with the blinding support of their technical partners, Shell and Bridgestone, had won again. Against all odds. This was a team that only four months before had been written off from the championship. They had overcome incredible hurdles and banded together, never once losing sight of the bouncing ball and even had a driver leading the World championship for the first time in over two years after this year’s Chinese Grand Prix. They were not driven so much by the desire to win as the fear of losing, according to Jean Todt. But despite the hallmark moment, the victory could only be enjoyed in their hearts; F1 is a cruel world where the battle is never as important as the war.
18 seconds after Massa hit national stardom, Fernando crossed the finish line as the youngest back to back World Champion in the sport’s illustrious history, and can now claim to be the last driver to win in the V10 era and the first to win with the new V8, proving beyond words the team’s outstanding ability to adapt to the new rules and making it only the fourth time that any team has clinched successive drivers' and constructors' titles. They also handed over a parting gift to their tire suppliers, Michelin, by giving them back to back tire championships just as the French tire maker celebrated their last race in Formula One.
Team Spirit had prevailed. Old wounds were healed; harsh words were forgiven; FIA feuds forgotten. The Mild Seven Renault F1 team had done it again. And it was time to celebrate.
For Flavio Briatore, this was more effective than chemotherapy. After being diagnosed with the same fate as his head of aerodynamics, Dino Toso, which led to a kidney tumor being removed this year, the expensively tanned and flamboyant Italian team principal dropped about ten years off his face as the team picked him up and carried him on their shoulders, chanting to the tune of ‘We are the Champions’
Euphoria, as a word, just doesn’t cut it. The crowd had gone wild; part of the team had managed to burst through one security barricade and stormed the foot of the podium. The joy felt that day was primal; it was unprocessed, unrehearsed and almost unimaginable. Grown men wept freely, while others embraced each other until they cut off one another’s circulation. But it wasn’t until I started getting squashed by the force of an hysterical mob that I felt the closest I have ever been to my maker. I never realized until this point that you could actually die from happiness, but I came close.
If it wasn’t for a disgruntled VIP next to me and a big, black security guard right in front that started exchanging blows, I doubt that I would have been able to break past the security perimeter and make it to the podium with the rest of the mechanics. I’m really not sure what would have happened if I didn’t make it past, but ironically, now that I was on the other side, the same screaming Brazilians that almost killed me, now gave life to the occasion and served as the perfect backdrop for victory. I’ve never felt more alive.

It’s a double edged sword, this mob. There are few that can claim to be more passionate than the Brazilians when it comes to their sport, which was illustrated perfectly on one famous occasion when the whole grandstand stood and gave the Nazi salute and chanted "Sieg Heil" at FIA President Jean-Marie Balestre back in 1991 after he had crossed swords with Ayrton Senna. But when they are chanting your name… That, my friends, is spiritual. Even if you are just an onlooker.

Fernando did as he has always done and passed the champagne down. We all took a swig, although I took more on my shirt than in my mouth. As far as championships go, it was all there: the drama, the triumph, the passion and the glory. But there was something missing: the trophy.

As the Renault team celebrated, marinating in the euphoria that enveloped the garage, someone had managed to walk off with the constructor's cup. It took a full two hours before security personnel at the track managed to retrieve it and catch the brazen thief before he left the paddock with the ultimate E-bay item. But don’t think for a moment that it had any effect on the stupor that was taking place up at the sharp end of pit lane. Trust me, this is a party that will last for 5 months – and it would take a hell of a lot more than a stolen cup or a race-winning Massa to put a damper on this parade.