However, the outcome of last night's dawn-to-night race at Abu Dhabi produced a different story at the end. Sebastian Vettel takes things to the different way by winning the last race of the season and eventually the Drivers champion. At the age of 23, Vettel becomes the youngest world champion ever.
Ferrari's championship leader Fernando Alonso came with a disappointing seventh while another Red Bull's title hopeful Webber was eight.
Coming into the race, the mathematics is pretty straight forward for the title contenders:
- Lewis Hamiton will win if all the title failed to finish with points.
- Fernando will win if he finished fourth regardless of others final position.
- Mark Webber will win if he finished first with Alonso third.
- Sebastian Vettel will win if he finished first with Alonso finished outside the top five.
The race started with Vettel grabbing the pole position from Hamilton, Alonso, Button and Webber on Saturday's finger-biting fight. On Turn One, Button leap ahead to third as Alonso made a poor start. Then on Turn Six, veteran Michael Schumacher had a scared of his life by surviving a crash with Vitantonio Liuzzi. Safety car was deployed and stayed until Lap 5.
Once the track is cleared Vettel started to pull away with a clean ahead of him. Alonso and Button worked behind while Alonso was certainly busy to keep Webber at bay.
Coming in for a pit at Lap 12, Webber made a gamble with a pit pushing to harder tyres strategy
but he rejoined in 16th place with momentarily got stuck behind Torro Roso's Jamie Alguersuari. Massa was then asked to pit, hoping that he will rejoin in front of the Aussie but that didn't work as well.
It seems that Ferrari was threating Webber as the main threat. Thus, they decided to pit Alonso on Lap 15, switching to hard tyres. That proved to be disastrous call as well. Alonso spent most of his remaining race behind Renault's Vitaly Petrov and in front of Webber. Down in 11th, Alonso struggled to past the Russian and made countless mistakes over the course.
Up front, another Renault was also holding Hamilton from the second spot. While Robert Kubica has yet to make a pit, Vettel had a comfortable cruise by punching down fastest laps and relinquishing the hope for a magnificent glory. When the Pole pits, the question remains if he would rejoin in front of Alonso. When that hopeful tactic for Ferrari failed, the title dream for the Spaniard seems to fall away.
In the end it was Vettel cruising to the chequered flag to earn himself the fifth win of the season and more crucially the Drivers Championship. The atmosphere at th epit wall was sparkled with ecstasy for the Red Bull Racing. Vettel won the season with four points ahead Alonso, becoming the youngest champion ever. With his win, it is time to reflect what a year it was in the end. Now we can look forward for the next season. See you again in 2011.
