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The five world champions on the current grid have all secured at least one title in Brazil and on Sunday they could be joined by a sixth – if Nico Rosberg wins the race, team-mate Lewis Hamilton’s hopes of an unlikely late-season comeback will be over.
First, though, the German has to negotiate one of the most intense weekends of the year.
The Brazilian Grand Prix throbs with a passion and fervour matched by few others.
Interlagos and Sao Paulo are inextricably linked with Formula 1 even if the days of a winning Brazilian driver may be some time in the past.
Brazil’s first legendary grand prix driver, Emerson Fittipaldi, was born there, and his successes on the world stage laid the path for all others to follow.
Ayrton Senna was, likewise, a Paulista, and is buried in Morumbi cemetery a few miles away. He was a hero to Rubens Barrichello, who grew up metres from the race track and forged his passion watching Senna there, before graduating to F1 a couple of years before his death, befriending him, and then taking up his mantle. Felipe Massa, another local boy, followed suit.
The fans know the glory days have long gone, that a Brazilian victory is as unlikely as a day without a traffic jam in one of the world’s most crowded cities.
But still they come, packing the grandstands and singing and chanting from early in the day.
What draws them there? A deep-seated passion for the sport, for one. The almost-certainty of a great sporting spectacle, for another.
Interlagos has a knack for producing exciting races. Drama is synonymous with the track, not least because of its position at the business end of the season.
It is a claustrophobic place. The circuit winds around a natural amphitheatre, high on a hill, the sprawl of Sao Paulo both a backdrop and crushing in from all sides. The heavy humidity, and almost-permanent threat of rain, add to the atmosphere. It feels locked in, and not just because of the cramped old paddock, a fraction of the size of anything Bernie Ecclestone finds acceptable these days.
The track is a splash of vibrant green in an ocean of concrete grey and smog brown; the city butting up against the perimeter fence, endless tower blocks filling the skyline.— BBC.
Online Reporter