Looking ahead to Brazil, Michael Schumacher’s goal seems as simple as it has ever been – to win the race. Whatever happens to Alonso, Michael needs to win this one to leave the sport on a high. So the current situation has actually removed all pressure from the German – he can concentrate on winning without thought of points in the bag. And, of course, if Alonso does encounter a problem that prevents him earning the single point that he needs, Michael will have the bonus of one more championship to add to his collection.

Paradoxically, this leaves all the pressure still on Renault. They know only too well that, if Alonso does not win, Michael will, so they have to ensure that the Spaniard finishes the race and in the points. The dithering over which engine spec to use, the new E or the tried and tested D, has already begun. There are tires to think of too – a puncture could ruin everything – plus all the other things that could go wrong, like a back marker who fails to notice that he is being lapped and drives into Alonso. The heat remains on Renault until the end.

There have been other years when similar scenarios have occurred. In 1983, Nelson Piquet needed to win in South Africa to make sure of stealing the championship from Prost. Piquet built a huge lead right from the start and was still going like the clappers in the Brabham BMW when he heard that Prost had retired. Suddenly, Nelson only needed to finish fourth or higher and he turned the boost way down to spare the engine, even allowing himself to be passed a couple of times. Patrese went on to win that race and Piquet duly sauntered into third and the championship.

I doubt things will be as easy for Alonso at Interlagos, however. Retirements for Michael are about as rare as hen’s teeth and Alonso will have to drive a narrow edge between speed and reliability for the entire distance. He will have earned his championship by the time he crosses the line.

What I would really like to see, even though it would defuse the whole championship battle, is for someone else to win in Brazil. Realistically, that would have to be Kimi Raikkonen. He has been close several times this year but has yet to win one and the lack of pace from the McLaren in Japan is unlikely to be repeated at Interlagos. It would be good if he could avoid a year without victories by taking the last race of the year.

Otherwise, the only ones in with a possibility of the win are the Ferrari and Renault number twos, Massa and Fisichella. As long as Michael is running, Massa will not be allowed to win, however. Fizzy stands a better chance, since Alonso would be content with a points-scoring finish, but somehow I can’t see him beating Schumacher unless it rains.

Which leaves only the Hondas and BMWs – and I don’t think they’re quite up to beating the top three as yet. Next year, maybe. And, of course, Toyota will find a way to shoot themselves in the foot…

It is going to be a fascinating race in Brazil and no-one is going to turn away for a moment, even though the championship looks as good as decided. After all, anything can happen in motor racing!

Those Brazilians have a pretty good record in F1. Apart from their world champions, there have been others, such as Carlos Pace, who were good but never had a car that was capable of winning consistently. And today Barrichello and Massa continue the tradition of quick Brazilians.

Nelson Piquet was the second Brazilian to win the championship, the first being Emerson Fittipaldi. And he was second too behind their greatest champion, Ayrton Senna.

Or was he? I have mentioned before that Piquet’s car control was phenomenal and there is a short video that proves it. Interestingly, the man he is fighting for position in this clip is Ayrton himself – and guess who wins. Piquet is in the white and yellow Williams, Senna in the black Lotus. The video quality is poor (and I must apologize for the Rolling Stones soundtrack) but one can still see Nelson do something in a be-winged F1 car that isn’t supposed to be possible – slide it through a corner.

It happened during the Hungarian Grand Prix of 1986. Have a look.

One of the American commenters to my personal blog, Gone Away, had this to say after reading of my new blog on F1:

Just know that I will certainly stop by to enjoy hurling a few fresh peanut shells occasionally, and that altho high-end tech-talk only confuses this bent caveman, I find myself inexplicably attracted to the chaos of almost any sort of automobile race track, along with the dust, the lights and the noise, whereby I become so absorbed in all the goings-on that any chatter from nearby bothers me not.

But if you have any dirt on any of these drivers…

I replied to his last sentence as follows:

Dirt on the drivers? The trouble with these modern guys is that they have to be so darn fit that they don’t get time to do anything naughty. Although they do say that Kimi Raikkonen spends many nights in raucous night clubs. And back in the fifties and sixties there were some pretty wild guys involved and parties could get really hectic, I believe.

Come to think of it, even today’s drivers lose their tempers on occasion. For instance, there was the time Nelson Piquet tried to remove another driver’s helmet without undoing the straps first. Hmmm, there may be a rich vein of posts in this one…

Having promised (well, sort of) to do so, we could start the ball rolling with a look at that particular incident. It is so famous in F1 that all you have to do is say “Nelson Piquet and Eliseo Salazar” and all fans will know what you’re talking about. But it bears repeating as a good example of Brazilian hot blood.

It was 1982 at the German Grand Prix. Nelson was driving for Brabham and it was the first year that they had obtained a turbo engine – a BMW that produced huge amounts of power but broke more often than not. To contain it, Brabham’s designer, Gordon Murray, produced one of the most beautiful cars ever – the Brabham BT50.

The team devised a cunning plan to ensure that, when the engine lasted the race, they won. It was the first time refueling had been seen in F1 for decades and it caught everyone by surprise. Nelson would hurtle off from the start in a seriously-light BT50, establish a huge lead and then come in for refueling. If everything went according to plan, he would still be in the lead when he emerged from the pits and the race would be in his pocket. The theory worked once – in Canada – but otherwise Piquet’s year was a long list of retirements.

We were used to these tactics by the time the circus came to Hockenheim and were not surprised when Nelson leapt into the lead and began to build a huge cushion. Until Eliseo Salazar entered the picture, that is.

It was still in the early laps when Nelson came up to lap one of the back markers, the said Eliseo. On the approach to a chicane at the end of a long straight, Nelson came screaming past Salazar, braked, and began to turn into the corner.

At this point, I have to say that I disagree with other commentators on what happened next. They all say that Salazar was not aware of Piquet’s presence but it is quite clear from the videos that the Brabham was ahead of the ATS when Nelson began to brake for the corner. Watch the video here and you will see that Salazar must have been asleep not to have noticed Piquet passing him. It is quite simple: Salazar did not even begin to hit the brakes and cannoned into the side of the Brabham at full speed. Both cars were out of the race immediately.

Understandably, Nelson was a little upset at the summary way in which he’d been bumped off the track. Remember, too, that he must have been in “absolute limit” mode – it was imperative that he build as big a lead as possible in a short time. He leapt out of the car and ran over to Salazar (who was calmly walking away) to explain his displeasure. And it must be that Eliseo’s answer to Piquet’s protest was insufficient, for it incensed the Brazilian even more. There followed the famous scene of Piquet attempting to hit a man in the head through a racing helmet. When that failed (for obvious reasons), he aimed a kick at the guy but, by that time, Eliseo was exiting stage right and was out of range.

That is all we saw on the television during the race but, apparently, there is a sequel. Standing nearby was a van ready to take the drivers back to the pits. Piquet strolled over and found that Eliseo was already sitting smugly in the back. And the fight began all over again, forcing the driver to get out and separate the combatants. Piquet promptly jumped into the van and drove off, leaving the van driver and Salazar to reflect upon the events of the previous few minutes.

Much later the Brabham engineers informed Piquet that the engine had been about to blow up anyway – Salazar had actually saved the BMW chiefs the embarrassment of yet another engine failure and in their home race. Nelson immediately phoned Salazar to apologize.

So ends the tale of F1’s biggest punch up. And I still say Nelson had every right to demonstrate his feelings on the matter. If only he’d persuaded Salazar to remove his helmet first…

Wherever F1 fans gather, the subject will come up: who was the greatest driver of all time? It’s a never-ending debate and one that has no answer, as it’s impossible to compare drivers from different eras; each faced and conquered the challenges of their time, extracting performance from their cars that seemed impossible.

Much also depends on what we have seen. In the early sixties, there was general consensus that the greatest was Tazio Nuvolari. René Dreyfuss said this of him: “He talked to his cars, and they answered! It was incredible. He would jump from side to side, put his whole body into the effort. It seemed to me sometimes that he was himself physically lifting the car – over a curb, for example, to take a corner faster. We’d ask ourselves often, how can he drive that way? That’s not right. But then he’d win …”

My problem is that I never saw Nuvolari drive, apart from blurred images in old newsreels that told one nothing. And how can we compare those skinny-tired monsters of the time with the technical masterpieces of today? The skills required to drive them must be entirely different.

So Nuvolari must remain for all time as the greatest driver of the pre-war era and we can talk only of the drivers of modern times. Fangio and Clark have some claim to be the best, but they occupy that intervening period when cars were still fairly primitive and downforce was never mentioned. Our era really starts with the introduction of wings; from that moment onwards, designers spent much of their time getting the cars to stick to the track.

With the possible exception of Stewart, there is no driver who stands head and shoulders above the rest through the seventies. Ground effect and skirts moved the goalposts at the end of the decade and I would propose a little-regarded driver as the one who mastered those cars better than any other: Nelson Piquet.

Ground effect cars were difficult to drive because they would hang on to the road like leeches but would let go very suddenly and without warning when the limit was reached. For this reason, you won’t see them sliding as they go through the corners; the drivers learned quickly to stay within the boundaries of adhesion. Except Piquet. Watch old videos of him taking the Brabham BT49 through corners and you will see the car twitching – it is right on the limit and Nelson is catching it every time it lets go. His reflexes were almost superhuman and it is no wonder that he was the only driver to mourn the outlawing of skirts a few years later.

The ground effect era was brief and Piquet was not to prove so outstanding in the cars that followed. But another Brazilian then came on the scene and towered over the drivers of his era. From the first, it was clear that Ayrton Senna was something special. He could get in a Toleman and wring its neck until it threatened the leaders. When he graduated to competitive cars, the only thing that would prevent him winning races was mechanical failure. I have no doubt that he was the greatest driver of the modern era.

Finally, there is Michael Schumacher. His record suggests that he might be on a par with Senna but there are doubts as well. The long list of controversies must be one and the new lions, Raikkonen and Alonso are others. Perhaps we need some distance before we can assess Mr Schumacher dispassionately.