Jenson Button is on the brink of world championship glory, but it could still slip away from him.
ITV.com/F1 columnist James Allen analyses how Button got to this point, the task he faces, and why he needs to be aiming for a podium to give himself a sufficient safety margin and win the title in style.
He also interprets the Friday form from Interlagos and explains why Red Bull appears to have the car to beat.
Jenson Button has one hand on the world championship trophy. But he cannot take anything for granted: He still needs to go out and win the title, rather than pick it up by default.
He is in the same position he was in back at Barcelona: 14 points ahead of his team-mate Rubens Barrichello.
The gap has been greater than that since then, but even through his fallow period in the second half of the season, he has managed to tick off races without anyone making significant inroads into his lead.
Now he wants to run across the finish line, not crawl.
And this weekend, his car looks competitive enough to allow him to do that.
Any kind of podium finish would give him the title, regardless of what his rivals do – and that is achievable.
Monza was a critically important weekend, where he scored eight points and stood on the podium for the first time since Turkey.
I think that without that result, clearly the points margin would be smaller, but also his confidence would now be more frail.
It broke the cycle of small points yields and gave him a boost.
This weekend offers him a similar chance to get a podium and to clinch the championship.
The car is working well this weekend. Button was very happy with its performance on the harder tyre, which he suggested would be his preferred race tyre.
He was getting quite a bit of understeer on the softer tyre and will have to try to dial that out tomorrow for qualifying.
Qualifying is where danger lurks for Button.
With the whole field separated by less than one second and the top 12 cars squeezed into half a second, the slightest slip – like the ones he’s made lately in qualifying – will leave him with some real work to do in the race.
This track is partly about engine power up the hill, but it’s mostly about the middle sector, which is twice as long as the other two sectors and is all about downforce and mechanical grip.
Red Bull looks fantastic in sector two, while Ferrari is really struggling: half a second off the Red Bull.
That suggests to me that both Ferraris will be struggling to get into Q2, let alone get beyond it.
The Brawn is a shade slower than Red Bull in sector two and the team will have to get the tactics right for qualifying as one would expect both Red Bulls to be strong as well as the McLarens, with their KERS systems.
These are worth a huge amount here, possibly as much as 100bhp for seven seconds per lap (which is a bigger percentage of the lap than most places because the lap is only 72 seconds).
Mark Webber has been the more aggressive Red Bull driver so far and you get the feeling that he really wants to put the Suzuka nightmare to bed.
Webber hasn’t been on it the last few races and he’s hell-bent on winning this race and seems to have no intention of helping his team-mate get there ahead of him.
I think the Brawns will be fighting for P3-6 on the grid and they cannot afford any slip-ups.
Fernando Alonso is an expert at closing out championships; he’s done it twice in Brazil.
His advice to Button? Go for the podium. A win needs too much risk-taking and just staying out of trouble to get some points may backfire.
Alonso believes a podium is possible for Button and I think that is the most likely outcome on Sunday.