Webber ends 2011 victorious

Mark Webber stepped out of the rather large shadow Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel has cast all year and won the Brazilian Grand Prix.

The Australian ended a disappointing season on a high by clinching his first win of the season after Vettel had struggled all afternoon with a gearbox problem.

Back-to-back Formula One World Champion Vettel had to settle for second place after spending the race short shifting through the lower gears to nurse his Red Bull to the end of the race.

While there might have been some drama in the cockpit of Vettel, it still seemed an easy afternoon for the team with neither McLaren or Ferrari capable of giving them any kind of challenge.

Instead it was left for Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso to battle over the final position on the podium and both battled throughout the afternoon with Button eventually clinching the position and with it second place in the championship.

The two both had good starts on the grid, but Button held the position going into to turn 1, then on lap 11, Alonso managed to take the position with a superb overtaking manoeuvre around the outside of turn five, it looked fantastic on the television, but in a later interview Button revealed he had to back-off the power due to debris on the track, which took the gloss off one of the best moves of the day!

Button had to wait until lap 62 to get Alonso back with Button setting up the move using the DRS and the wait was worth it as he successfully completed the pass.

Lewis Hamilton looked set to battle with Button and Alonso early on, but just like Sebastian Vettel, he too had a gearbox problem which his McLaren succumbed too on lap 48.

Felipe Massa ended his home Grand Prix with a couple of doughnuts on the final corner to put some smiles on the faces of the Brazilian fans, the Ferrari driver matched his best result of the season with fifth.

Every other driver was lapped by the lead cars, with Force India scoring good points with Adrian Sutil taking eight points by finishing sixth with team-mate Paul Di Resta taking an additional four points by finishing eighth.

Nico Rosberg secured the points required to defeat Mercedes GP team-mate Michael Schumacher by finishing seventh, Kamui Kobayashi finished ninth for Sauber while Renault's Vitaly Petrov took the final points paying position.

Brazilian drivers Rubens Barrichello and Bruno Senna finished the race outside the top ten.

Barrichello went into the weekend not knowing if this would be his last race of his long and successful career and finished fourteenth.

Senna finished seventeenth after he was given a very harsh drive-thru penalty after a clear racing incident with Michael Schumacher on lap 10. Schumacher attempted to make a move around the outside of the first corner and squeezed Senna on the inside of the corner, but the race stewards adjudged that Senna caused an avoidable collision and was given the penalty following Schumacher's race being ruined by a left rear puncture.

Overall not the most entertaining of Grand Prix's, but a one-two finish for Red Bull was very apt in a season dominated by the Milton Keynes based team.