Ultimately, that conservatism almost cost him the title as two laps from the end he was passed by the very impressive Sebastian Vettel in a Toro Rosso and it all seemed over.

As Ferrari and Brazil were celebrating their first World Drivers Champion since Ayrton Senna, no-one was watching the pace of the two Toyota cars who had elected not to switch to the intermediate wet tyres. Both Toyotas had gone through the second, twisty section of the racetrack 10 seconds slower than the rest of the field. At the start of the previous lap, Timo Glock, running in 4th position was only 12-14 seconds ahead of Hamilton and Vettel.

As Felipe Massa crossed the line, the Toyota, Toro Rosso and McLaren had only just passed through the second split timing beam, and Massa was effectively World Drivers Champion 2008.

The TV pictures were focussed on the celebrations of the Ferrari team and so didn’t show the fact that Vettel and Hamilton had actually caught the Toyota at turn XX, the penultimate corner before the long, sweeping, uphill turn XX. The Toyota simply didn’t have any grip in the last corner, so the two drivers on Intermediates flew past Glock and Ferrari were denied the opportunity of having two World Drivers Champions in their team in 2009.

There was a surreal moment, as both the Ferrari and McLaren team were both celebrating winning the World Driver’s championship as someone pointed out the timing screen to Massa Sr. and he was visibly crushed.

I don’t think words can express how he must have felt at that moment, but he can hold his head high. His boy did all that was asked of him – he led from pole position for the whole race – pitstops notwithstanding, was in control and gave a very dignified press conference.

Massa has come on in leaps and bounds this year. Speaking as someone who was wondering if Massa would manage a double-hat trick of spins in the Silverstone rain, I have a new respect for him. Hopefully he will take heart from this year and come back stronger in 2009.

So what does 2009 hold? well, with new rule changes and the return to slick tyres, the hope amongst fans, sponsors and organisers is that we will have closer racing and more overtaking.

We also have the exciting prospect that the BMW’s that have been looking lacklustre towards the end of the season have done so because they froze development of their 2008 car long before anyone else in order to concentrate on 2009.

Robert Kubica has shown how fast he can be this year, and with the right car under him he can be a race winner and possible World Driver’s Champion. Hopefully the extra development time for the 2009 BMW will give him just that.

Vettel, the man who so nearly broke millions of British hearts has wrung the neck of the Toro Rosso ‘Junior’ Red Bull team and is now ‘promoted’ to Red Bull Racing. The Toro Rosso has outshone the larger outfit this year and Vettel may question his decision to move. He will take the place of the retiring David Coulthard, so will hope that the magnets that seem to attract trouble are removed from that car.

Then we have Fernando Alonso. Consistently the best driver of 2008, with back-to-back magical wins in an uncompetitive car Alonso has really shone this year. I doubt he will move to Honda during the closed season, as the Renault has been improving all year, whereas the Honda has seemed to drop back every weekend. Let’s just hope that the Renault form in 2008 does not mean they have neglected their 2009 development.

So for the first time since 2001, we will have three former world champions in the field. 2009 looks to be a very promising season.

One last word on Lewis Hamilton’s championship: He’s not the most popular driver in the field, and often comes across as arrogant in interviews but he thoroughly deserved this championship. Yes, he made some very silly mistakes this year, but when you consider that had he finished in 6th, he would have been level with Massa on points. Massa would have been declared champion because he had more wins in the season. One of those wins was gifted to him by a very dubious FIA decision.

In Formula One, Luck plays a very strong role. Massa was lucky that the stewards decided to punish Hamilton in Belgium, Lewis was lucky that Toyota made the wrong decision on tyres.

And to all those theories that Glock deliberately slowed to let Hamilton pass, the following is the final lap times of all the drivers. Neither Toyota changed tyres, and both did similar laptimes. Trulli had no reason to back off, so we can only summise that they were both still pushing as hard as they could in the conditions.

The final word of the 2008 world championship should surely go to Bernie Ecclestone in an interview with Martin Brundle. As Brundle asked how there seems to be a lot of championship battles that go down to the wire:

“I know… It gets harder every year!”

Lewis Hamilton picture copyright twobigpaws, via flickr