Red Bull’s Mark Webber finally made it onto the podium, winning the last race of the Formula One season at Interlagos.
It was Webber’s first win in 26 races, and the seventh of his career. He had begun the race in second on the grid behind Sebastian Vettel and said afterwards he had hoped the race would be a two-man job, but Vettel was knocked back to second with a gearbox problem, leaving the way clear for his team-mate to pass on lap 30.
“Seb did a great lap for pole yesterday, but I had a little bit of the rub of the green. It would have been nice to have had a race with Sebastian all the way through, but he had a little bit of a problem,” Webber said.
“It's a win I'll take because I've had enough bad luck. That's the way motorsport goes sometimes. But it was an important win for me and the team to end on a high, and I enjoyed the last few laps.”
Jenson Button finished 27 seconds behind Webber in third to take what was his eighth podium place in the last nine races, and collect the 15 points enough to guarantee him second in the championship.
Meanwhile, Red Bull boss Christian Horner insisted Vettel's gearbox problem was "genuine" and not a ploy to hand Mark Webber a race win.
"Anybody that listened to the conversation between the race engineer or looked in the back of the garage at the amount of activity that was going on over that gearbox," he explained.
"Of course there will always be people that have theories, but categorically that gearbox, how on earth it got to the end of the race is beyond me. Thankfully it did.
"If anyone thinks that was concocted in any way, I can absolutely hand on heart guarantee you that based on the blood pressure on the pit wall you can rest assured it was a genuine issue."
