F1: 2011 wraps up with tears of frustration, sadness and joy

Watching Seb. Vettel strike on on an imperious course to inevitable victory from his record-breaking 15 pole position, it seemed as if the interest in the race would focus on a Button / Alonso battle for third. Sure, Button did, initially, seem to be threatening to take second from a storming Webber but as Alonso hassled Button, it seemed like Button's soft tyres faded just a little, but Alonso's improved slightly.

And there seemed to be some issue with Hamilton, too. Jumped by Alonso off the line, the only reason Hamilton didn't lose another spot was because Massa, with whom he has already had five crashes this season, backed out of a first corner confrontation. And, although the top four dropped Massa within a couple of laps, Hamilton was unable to make any impression on Alonso.

But, as the race went on, gremlins started to appear: Vettel's gearbox began to overheat and he was told to look after the car. He slipped to second behind Webber and held station, periodically banging in a fastest lap but then backing off.

There will be suspicion that Vettel handed his team mate his only victory of the year: after all, winning this race would not have given Vettel another record - his DNF in Abu Dhabi put paid to that. But Webber drove a faultless race, setting fastest laps as often as Vettel - and ending up with the FTD on the last lap, a trick Vettel normally reserves. And the team would have had to be very and consistently devious to have arranged the result in this way: throughout the race, Race Control kept fans informed of the state of the gearbox by broadcasting pit-to-car announcements, including instructions to short shift (early in the race) and then to short shift and take it very easy in second and third gears. But there was one instruction we did not hear: to avoid second gear altogether: with seven gears to play with, second is helpful but not necessary around a track that has no corners where the car would get bogged down unless it entered very slowly. And Vettel didn't do that. At the end of the race, the team announced that the car had no oil left in the gearbox. That doesn't matter: it's the last race of the season and total destruction would be immaterial.

Which is what happened to Hamilton: his gearbox turned itself into a bag of bits mid-way through the race. His team told him "there's a problem with the gearbox. There's nothing you can do to help." Minutes later, its internal organs failed.

In truth, Vettel's 15 pole positions is not, technically, as impressive as the record set by Nigel Mansell: this season has four more races than in Mansell's day.

Button adopted a radical strategy: the first set of soft tyres, on which he had qualified, did not work as well as hoped. Nor did the second set. So for his third set, Button went onto the harder compound, much earlier than anyone else. Received wisdom was that his hard compound tyres would cost him about one second a lap for the first ten or so laps of the life of the tyre, then (because the soft tyres would have lost their edge) the difference would close. Button would need to do about 35 laps on his hard tyres - and in his last ten laps, he would be fighting with competitors on the same tyre that was about 20 laps younger, if the usual pattern followed. He would, it appeared, be gambling on saving about 25 seconds from not making a further pit stop and others having faster cars but not 25 seconds faster over the remaining race distance. But Button was faster on hard tyres than Hamilton on softs: indeed, he was faster on hard tyres than he had, himself, been on softs. The car did not slide and Button began another of the last-segment spectacular drives that have marked this season.

And Button was faster than almost everyone else, too. And then, when everyone else started to pit for their compulsory change to hard tyres, Button took on a second set of the white-wall "Prime" tyres. Amazingly, the change from soft to hard had improved his performance so much that he had negated the presumed time loss.

By the end, Button was not threatening Vettel but it turned out that there was good reason for this: he was at best marginal on fuel. Instead of the usual congratulatory messages from the pit wall, a worried engineer said "Park at turn one, Jenson. Park at turn one." That left Button with the long walk back to the pits and the celebrations that Webber and Vettel were already starting before the podium celebration.

Down at Williams, Patrick Head quietly slipped out of his "Chief Designer" role. It's been a terrible year for Williams. Last year, they won this race with Nico Hulkenberg - then didn't keep him on because Maldonado brought budget. There has been much speculation about the Williams line-up for next year with some suggesting that Kimi Raikonnen might take part ownership of the team and come back as a driver. That's probably spurious gossip. And Rubens, himself, says that he expects to be back in the Williams next year. It would be nice: pottering around Interlagos, in a car that even the team admits is not good enough, Rubens passed a milestone of epic proportions: 50,000 racing miles. And, unlike most of his previous home races, he did make it to the end of the race.

Further down the pit lane, the name "Team Lotus" had been relegated to a small note under padding around the cockpit. As in the recent past, the name "Caterham" had been writ large on the side pods. And now it is certain: Tony Fernandes has given up the name "Team Lotus." Renault will, reportedly, apply to the FIA to formally change the name of its team even though, on current plans, Group Lotus will have nothing to do with the design or development of the car and will, as now, be sponsors only. It's sad to see the team that had the true Chapman spirit lose its name for a mix of commercial and political reasons. It takes a long time to build a successful racing team - yet in just two years, Fernandes, Gascoyne and their small band of (mostly) merry men have brought the cars to being genuine challengers for the mid-field. Delicious irony that the team they are most often snapping at the heels of - and sometimes beating is Renault. After the horrible things directors at Group Lotus said about investing in a team that stood a chance of success instead of in Team Lotus, it's a pleasure to see them forced to eat their words, even as they take the exclusive rights to the Lotus name in Formula One.

Glock's race was over when his left rear wheel wasn't secured at a pit stop and bounced down the pit lane exit: he pulled the car over looking very glum. Virgin haven't had the season they hoped for and amongst the casualties of that is d'Ambrosio who is to be replaced by Charles Pic.

The rumour mill is going strongly: Renault admit they are talking to Kimi and they appear to have their options open for both seats: last week, Kubica told the team that his doctors say he will not be cleared for racing for at least the early part of 2012. Petrov brings money, Senna appears to be bringing a burgeoning talent.

Senna's poor finish in Interlagos was not, according to pretty much everyone except die-hard Schumacher fans and the stewards - his fault. Schumacher tried an outside pass and they came together, then Schumacher attacked in the second part of the corner and barged into Senna's car causing himself a puncture. But it was Senna that was ordered to serve a drive-through penalty. That coupled with a gearbox problem dropped him into the clutches of Team Lotus where he finished behind Heikki - after a genuine race for position. The team didn't score any points in its two years - but its finishes meant its technical position at the end of the season was tenth out of 12 teams - and only five points behind Williams, one of the oldest teams in the sport.

So, with the garage doors down on careers and dreams, 2011 is over.

Roll on 2012.