Sebastian Vettel WINS Brazilian Grand Prix – and Lewis Hamilton fights back to 4th

Sebastian Vettel has won the Brazilian Grand Prix, beating pole sitter Bottas in to second place with Raikkonen in third. But Hamilton fought back to fourth place.

In the scheme of things, with Lewis Hamilton already crowned the Champion (and Mercedes maintaining the constructors title), the Brazilian Grand Prix looked set to be pretty insignificant.

But Lewis Hamilton crashing out in Q1 meant he started from the pit lane, and that meant the interest lay on just what he could achieve in the race. Would he make the podium?

In the end, he nearly did.

In fact, Hamilton had made it up to sixth place almost before the race was a quarter done, and in the end he got to fourth spot. But he couldn’t quite find enough to take Raikkonen for third in the closing laps.

But the race win belonged to Sebastian Vettel, showing the form he, and Ferrari, seemed to lose a couple of months back, and controlled the race after taking the lead from pole-sitter Bottas at the start.

Behind the front four of Vettel, Bottas, Raikkonen and Hamilton, Verstappen and Ricciardo took fifth and sixth for Red Bull, with Ricciardo staging his own comeback from 14th at the start and a spin on lap one, and Felipe Massa managing seventh in his final home grand prix.

Fernando Alonso managed eighth place for McLaren, with Perez in the Force India and Hulkenberg in the Renault rounding out the points places.

The 2017 Grand Prix Circus comes to an end in two weeks time in Abu Dhabi and, despite there being nothing left to win, it could be a n interesting race if Vettel stays on form and Hamilton doesn’t hit anything in qualifying.