SAO PAULO, Brazil — It took a pass on the final turn to keep Lewis Hamilton from wasting another chance to become Formula One’s youngest champion.
McLaren’s Hamilton finally clinched his first F1 title Sunday, but only after overtaking Toyota’s Timo Glock on the final turn of the last lap of the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Hamilton was in danger of losing the title in Brazil for the second year in a row until making the pass that allowed him to finish fifth at Interlagos, enough to give him his first title at age 23. Renault’s Fernando Alonso was 24 when he won in 2005.
“The most dramatic race of my whole life,” Hamilton said. “It’s pretty much impossible to put this into words. I’m still speechless.”
Ferrari’s Felipe Massa won the race in front of his home crowd, and Hamilton would have lost the championship had he finished out of the top five.
“This was one of the toughest races of my life, if not the toughest,” Hamilton said.
The Briton fell to seventh at one point, but quickly recovered and was comfortably in position to clinch the title until heavy rain began to fall in South America’s biggest city with five laps to go.
Hamilton and the other leaders were forced to change into wet tires, but Hamilton’s pace slowed considerably while some of the other drivers were able to keep pushing.
Hamilton dropped to sixth place after being overtaken by Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel with two laps to go. After Vettel passed Glock, Hamilton also moved up one spot to finish the season with 98 points, one more than Massa.
“Even when (Vettel) got past Lewis, we never gave up, and Lewis never gave up because we knew that Timo was on dry tires,” McLaren team principal Ron Dennis said. “Lewis took his chance brilliantly, and the result was one of the most thrilling finishes in sporting history.”
Last year, Hamilton lost the title by one point to Massa’s teammate, Kimi Raikkonen. He had led the Finn by seven points, but a mistake trying to make a pass on the first lap and a gear box problem led to a seventh-place finish and second overall.
Hamilton had finished worse than fifth only five times in the previous 17 races this year, but it had happened twice in the past four races — he was seventh at the Italian Grand Prix on Sept. 14 and 12th at the Japanese Grand Prix on Oct. 12.
With his better luck this year, Hamilton became the first British driver to win the championship since Damon Hill in 1996 with Williams.
Hamilton clinched the title despite racing with the same engine he used in his victory at the Chinese GP two weeks ago, while the Massa’s Ferrari had a new one. Teams are obligated to use the same engine in two consecutive races.
Hamilton, F1’s first black driver, finished the season with seven pole positions and five victories, improving on his remarkable rookie season in 2007 when he edged then-teammate Alonso in the drivers’ standings.
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