And so here we are it all comes down to this weekend's Brazilian GrandPrix in Sao Paolo. with the driver's championship up for grab's we are going to have a fight on our hands. Fernando Alonso had an incredible drive in Austin, over the weekend to keep himself in contention as the championship heads for a straight fight between the Ferrari driver and RedBull's reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel.
Both driver's are aiming for their third driver's title's and at the moment the momentum is with Sebastian Vettel and he is clearly favourite to win the championship in Brazil this weekend. However, it is thought that rain could be on the cards this weekend which could play into Fernando Alonso's hands. The Spaniard always performs well as the underdog.
Last year's race was won by RedBull's Mark Webber who took his first win of the year as Vettel had at that point wrapped up his second title. Meanwhile Fernando Alonso finished the race in 4th place.
Mark Webber retired from the US GP with an alternator failure and RedBull have admitted that they are concerned about Vettel's alternator so their engine supplier have decided to give Vettel a new spec alternator to give the German his best opportunity to win the title.
The Brazilian GrandPrix always throw's up a surprise and with this season being so unpredictable with there being eight different winners anything is possible and with the prospect of there being rain it is going to be an extremely interesting weekend.
The race also sees the end of an era as the curtain will come down on Michael Schumacher's comeback campaign that in three year's has seen the German finish on the podium just once when he finished third in Valencia earlier this year. Over at McLaren, it is another end of an era as Lewis Hamilton starts his final race for the Woking based team as he heads off to Mercedes for 2013.
Sergio Perez will be aiming to give Sauber a good result in his last outing for the Swiss team before he heads to McLaren replacing Lewis Hamilton.
Finally Force India's Nico Hulkenberg will contest his last race for the Silverstone based outfit before he moves to Sauber.
So I was going to leave this topic until the flag drops in Brazil however I have decided that I would go ahead and mention it know. This season saw Sky Sports show live coverage of all F1 race's on their dedicated HD channel. At first I didn't particularly like their coverage and I still don't to be honest. I love their commentators, David Croft and Martin Brundle as their partnership is fantastic and Ted's Notebook is great and very informative.
Their pundit team is ok, although I think there is no need to have both Georgie Thompson and Simon Lazenby attending the races. I'm not a fan of Lazenby's, I don't particularly like his style of presenting and while trying to be funny in Monaco he made a distasteful joke about Princess Grace. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Sky decide to replace Simon with Georgie. They could then leave Anthony Davidson to do the the Sky Pad by himself.
I believe that their is absolutely no need for the Sky Pad feature as in my opinion they over analysis every detail of the race. I also believe that the fact that the channel are on an hour and a half for race day build up is crazy as they end up running out of things to say. Unlike the BBC's team's there doesn't seem to be any chemistry between the presenters except for Ted and Georgie when they present the F1 Show, they work very well together.
I do like the fact however that Sky send Rachel Brooks to the race's as we get update's from her over the course of race weekend's. The Sky team haven't engaged the fan's this year which is extremely disappointing in my opinion.
As for the BBC, I thought that they had lost a number of key personnel to Sky for this year was going to have an adverse affect on their coverage and of course this season was the first ear that they were 'sharing' the coverage with Sky, however in my opinion that was not the case as the Beeb were only allowed to show 10 races live. I have to say that the quality of their coverage hasn't gone hill at all and they have done a fantastic job.
Lee McKenzie, Jake Humphrey, Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard all stayed onboard this season and Lee has down a fantastic job as always in her role as pitlane reporter. However this season she stepped up to the mark when Jake was away covering the Olympics and Euro 2012. With the Brazilian GrandPrix this weekend it marks Jake's last GrandPrix for the Beeb before he moves on to BT Vision to host the channel's Premiership football coverage. It's a great move for Jake as footbaall is his first love so it was a natural move for him however he is going to be sorely missed next season, however in a recent interview Jake stated that he hadn't completely closed the door on Formula One, however in the same interview he said that it came as a sign as he and his wife Harriott are expecting their first child and the due date just happens to be the day the 2013 F1 season gets underway.
In my opinion, Lee McKenzie will more then likely take over as the presenter of the Beeb's coverage, as she is a natural and did a fantastic job filling in for Jake. So I believe that if she gets the job with the BBC, Georgie will probably step up to the same position with Sky.
The BBC have yet to announce who will replace Jake and no time frame has been given, it is also not yet known what races the BBC will cover next year so we shall have to wait and see.
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