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McLaren Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton (C) of Britain celebrates with team mates after winning the 2008 FIA Formula One Championship at the Brazilian F1 Grand Prix in Sao Paulo November 2, 2008. REUTERS/Bruno Domingos (BRAZIL)

LONDON (Reuters) – If it were submitted to Hollywood as a script for a far-fetched thriller it might have a chance, but most realism editors would surely have rejected it as fiction.

The 2008 Formula One world championship showdown, otherwise known as the Brazilian Grand Prix, delivered the same kind of unpredictable and topsy-turvy plot as the season that preceded it – a story of wild weather, changing track conditions, home heroes, unexpected episodes and dramatic endings.

It was a race that, in the end, defied analysis.

But it was a race, in the end, that was defined by one man’s self-belief and determination; a story of interwoven dramas and emotional finales.

HAMILTON'S RACE

Two or more others may have decided to re-write the script that was previously put forward, and approved by Bernie Ecclestone, but Lewis Hamilton chose to stick to his own version of events until the chequered flag dropped and the fat lady cleared her throat.

When he passed Timo Glock’s Toyota, however, at the long final corner of the 71st lap of a tense race, even he must have wondered if he could overhaul that particular German before the gargling noises ended.

Sebastian Vettel, another young German driver of great potential, had already passed Hamilton and left him perilously close to missing out on a world title by the slimmest of margins at the final race again.

But Glock, on worn tyres, fighting the wet conditions, suddenly lost his momentum.

And in that moment, as a result of his decision to stay out on the dry-weather rubber that he believed might carry him to the finish, Hamilton’s championship challenge was rewarded.

It was hardly the drive of his life. Nor was it the greatest afternoon of perfect preparation, tactical mastery and pit-wall switches of strategy in the difficult conditions from the McLaren Mercedes team.

But it was enough.

DRAMA FOR MASSA

The luckless, brilliant, perfect and dignified Felipe Massa had thrilled his 100,000 partisan fans packed into creaking old Interlagos with a text-book race to victory for Ferrari.

It was all he could do.

But it was not enough because Hamilton, nerves jangling somewhere hidden deep down below the surface of a body and mind that can digest danger, tension and fear as easily as ordinary mortals take consommé, needed only to finish fifth.

And what a drama he made of that.

In effect, McLaren conceded the race to Ferrari several days, if not weeks, before the lights went out. ‘Let them go, we will play for third, fourth or fifth’, was their attitude.

In approaching the race in such an almost neurotic calculated and deliberate a fashion, they handed the initiative to their rivals who had proved, in 2007 and before, that they knew very well how to race fast and win in Brazil.

And in striving to avoid trouble, for Hamilton, they seemed to take their foot off the throttle and give other teams a chance. Renault, in the form of two-times champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso, and Toro Rosso, in the shape of Sebastian Vettel, both took advantage.

Which left Hamilton hanging on for fifth… hanging on for his title… vulnerable, edgy and forced to swallow the lump in his throat as he managed, finally, to recover fifth from Glock at the final corner of the final lap of the final race of the year to take his title.

DOWN TO THE WIRE

You cannot but wonder what Steven Spielberg would make of it all.

Even Ecclestone, on the grid before the start, laughed gently at the suggestion that he might have had something to do with the fact that 25 of the 59 world championship seasons since 1950 had been taken ‘down to the wire’ at the final race.

“It’s not easy,” he quipped.

And it is beyond belief that he could have staged a show that provided such drama as this showdown in Sao Paulo, the climax to end them all.

That Hamilton, whose early days in karts were fired by his hero Ayrton Senna, should collect his first world title, of a predicted many, in the great Brazilian’s native city, added a piquancy that could not be missed.

It was given depth and emotion too by the fact that he beat a Brazilian, Massa, who was seeking to become the first of his nation to take the championship since Senna won in 1991 – driving for McLaren.

Many of the sprawling mass of fans must have wondered how to react when they saw the man in the yellow helmet climb from his McLaren to be crowned.

But that sweet and sour connection with the past, with the legacy of Senna’s greatness, was not the only neat ending in this extraordinary contest when enforced tyre changes – thanks to the capricious weather – played havoc with a grid created by stratagems that were chucked aside because of the enforced reactions to the unfolding dramas.

RAIN AND INTERLAGOS

Rain nearly always has this affect on a Grand Prix, wherever it may be held, but at Interlagos, with its changing gradients and bumps and noise and with the high stakes involved, it has an even greater sense of affect.

Hence, Giancarlo Fisichella rose from nowhere, or 19th to be precise, to run in the top five for Force India in the opening stages when McLaren’s meticulous caution cost Hamilton places as they delayed switching him from intermediate wet tyres back to dry-weather rubber.

Hence Alonso, Vettel and Glock came and upset the script by bursting into roles that few had anticipated, their teams swapping swiftly to the right tyres when the weather changed – prepared to take risks while others waited.

And nobody expected the first and last corners of this decisive event to provide connected dramas that, in the end, reflected its huge value as riveting and dynamic entertainment.

When Lewis Hamilton was 13, and new to the junior programme at McLaren, he met a senior driver who took him under his wing and gave him some time and guidance: David Coulthard.

In this race, after 246 race starts, he was heading into the sunset after announcing he would retire at the end of the year, having made his F1 debut as successor to Senna in the Williams team at the 1994 Spanish Grand Prix.

But the 37-year-old Scot, who also gave Hamilton a guided tour of the McLaren garage at the Belgian Grand Prix ten years ago, saw his race and his career end at the opening corner.

It was therefore more than appropriate that Hamilton, once one of his young protégés, should not only win the title in Brazil, but also deliver it in such dramatic fashion at the final corner of arguably the most dramatic race in modern F1 history.