The Formula One Season Finale

The 2013 Formula One season comes to a close this weekend at Interlagos. The World Drivers' championship and the Constructors' championship have already been decided but there are still plenty of story lines leading into this race and plenty of story lines that carry over to 2014.

Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull not only look to extend their winning streak to nine consecutive races to close out what has been a dominating year for the team but Vettel also looks to tie Michael Schumacher's record of thirteen wins in a season. The bigger story out of the Red Bull camp is the final race for Mark Webber as he will be leaving the team to race Porsche's LMP1 efforts in the FIA World Endurance Championship and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Entering his final Formula One race, Webber has 9 wins in 214 starts, all coming with Red Bull. He scored on debut driving for Minardi in his home Australian Grand Prix in 2002. After two seasons at Jaguar, Webber was able to get his first career podium at Monaco driving for Williams where he spent another two seasons. Webber joined Red Bull in 2007 as a teammate to David Coulthard but it wasn't until his third year with the team and first with Vettel as teammate that Webber finally found the results all young drivers dream about. He scored his first career pole and first career win at the 2009 German Grand Prix and would cap his season with a win in Brazil.

In 2010, Webber found himself in the thick of the championship battle. He won four races including the Monaco Grand Prix and was second to Fernando Alonso entering the season finale at Abu Dhabi, only eight points back of the Spaniard. But as we all know by now, that 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was the beginning of the Sebastian Vettel reign as he took the race win and the title, something he hasn't relinquished since. Webber ended 2010 third in the standings and he would finish third again in 2011 where his lone win was the season finale in Brazil. Last year, Webber joined the likes of Senna, Hill, Schumacher, Prost, Moss, Stewart, Fangio, Trintignant, Lauda, Scheckter, Coulthard and Alonso as multiple time winners of the Monaco Grand Prix. He also picked up a win at Silverstone after making a late charge pass the two-time champion Alonso.

Now the Australian's Formula One career appears to be coming to a close (barring a comeback after Porsche). Just like 2011, his teammate has the championship locked up, Webber has yet to win a race and the series is heading to Brazil. Webber has finished on the podium in three of the last four races and has started on pole for two of them. Webber also needs just three points to jump the injured Kimi Räikkönen for fourth in the championship.

Webber's career Formula One will be remember for him being talented but stuck in sluggish rides the first half of his career before finally catching a break but catching a break at the exact time one of the best drivers in the history of Formula One was coming into bloom. Now Webber will return to Le Mans after a Mercedes that had a tendency to get airborne cost him a shot in the French classic fourteen years ago.

Brazil will also be the final race for Felipe Massa driving for Scuderia Ferrari. He joined Michael Schumacher as teammate in 2006, replacing fellow Brazilian Rubens Barrichello at the team. Massa picked up two wins in his first year with the team at Turkey and at Interlagos, becoming the first Brazilian to win the Brazilian Grand Prix since Ayrton Senna in 1993. Massa was world champion for about 30 seconds in 2008 after winning his home Grand Prix for the second time in three years but a pass in the penultimate corner by Lewis Hamilton around Timo Glock crushed the joy of the Brazilians as the rain started to fall harder.

Since that day, being left standing in the rain having done all he could but still coming up short, Massa has yet to stand on top of the podium again. A dog of a car in 2009 and the emergence of Brawn and Red Bull crushed the first half of Massa's season but a podium at Silverstone appear to be a sign of good things to come for the Brazilian. Until a stray piece of suspension damper hit Massa in the head at the end of the second round of qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix not only ended Massa's season but nearly his life.

But Massa returned and returned with a bang. He qualified ahead of his new teammate Fernando Alonso in the 2010 season opener at Bahrain but finished behind directly behind the Spaniard in the race as Alonso took the win and Massa made it a Ferrari 1-2. At the following race in Australia, Massa finished third ahead of Alonso but the rest of the season went into favor of the Spaniard. Massa would pick up three more podiums in 2010 but no wins. In his final three seasons with Ferrari, Massa has accumulated just three podiums including a third at Interlagos last year and a third at Barcelona this year but his final three years with the Scuderia are much different from his first three.

Only three podiums in the last three years, no pole positions, two fastest laps, both coming in the 2011 season and his best finish in the championship is sixth. The three years at Ferrari saw Massa score eleven wins, fifteen pole positions, eleven fastest laps and never finished worse than fourth in the championship and of course, was world champion for about thirty seconds.

After eight years with the team, Massa will head to Williams where he looks to rejuvenate not only his career but that team which has only scored five points in the 2013 season.

After the feel good stories of Webber and Massa, the rest of the stories involved question marks and revolve around 2014 but before we get to those, what about the questions that directly concern the season finale?

Who will finish second in the Constructors' championship?

Mercedes leads Ferrari by fifteen and Lotus by thirty-three heading into the season finale.

Can McLaren get a podium?

Forget a win. In what looks to be the team's first winless season since 2006, the team wants to avoid it's first podium-less season since 1980 when John Watson and a young Alain Prost were drivers. Maybe a podium is even a stretch for this team as the best finish Jenson Button and Sergio Pérez have mustered this season is fifth on two occasions (Button in China and Pérez in India).

Can someone end Vettel's streak?

Depending on who you talk to, Vettel either set the record for consecutive race wins at Austin and is looking to extend it at Interlagos or he is looking to tie the record at Interlagos. Either way, can anyone stop Vettel from winning nine in a row? Does Webber have a 2011 performance in him? Can Massa steal one before leaving Ferrari? What about Ferrari in general? They haven't scored a podium since Singapore. Can Mercedes stop him? Could Romain Grosjean pick up his first career win? The Frenchman has been on fire in the second half of the season but can he translate that into a win?

When the rain come, who will shine?

Let's face it, we are going to Brazil, rain is bound to happen. In 2009, rain extended qualifying to nearly a three hour session. In 2010, Nico Hülkenberg stole pole position in his Williams and last year driving for Force India he finished ahead of Vettel and Schumacher in fifth in what was a race that saw on and off showers. Could he find his way onto the podium if it rains? Jean-Éric Vergne finished eighth from seventeenth on the grid last year, Vitaly Petrov finish eleventh in a Caterham and Charles Pic twelfth in a Marussia.

In a wet qualifying session at Spa earlier this year, Giedo van der Garde was third after Q1 when he took a gamble on slicks and three of the four cars from Caterham and Marussia advanced to Q2. Paul di Resta made the right call to use the intermediate tires at the beginning of Q3 and appeared he was going to score his first career pole before Mercedes and Red Bull caught a the track at the right time as it was drying out ending the Scots hopes for pole. But di Resta did out qualify both Lotus drivers which occupied row four and the Ferraris which occupied row five.

And then there are the questions over 2014.

Who is going to Lotus? Who is going to Force India? Who is going to Sauber?

Where does Hülkenberg land? Does Pérez stay in Formula One? Does di Resta stay in Formula One?

Where does Maldonado take his money? Does Sergey Sirotkin get a super license? Who else moves up into Formula One? Does Fabio Leimer have any shot after winning the GP2 title?

Of course this will be the final race of the V8-era in Formula One. Next year, brand new 1.6 liter, turbocharged V6 engines will be in each car not the grid and be produced by Renault, Mercedes and Ferrari.

This will be the last race for Cosworth after their return in 2010. In their final four seasons, Cosworth powered Williams, the once-Team Lotus (now Caterham), HRT and Virgin/Marussia. They had zero wins in those four seasons, scored a total of 74 points (all coming from Williams when they ran the engine from 2010-11) and their best finish was fourth in the 2010 European Grand Prix with Rubens Barrichello driving a Williams.

After this race, the month of December will be a week away. The winter break will begin and the teams will head back to winterizing Europe, leaving the comfortable conditions of late spring in Brazil and 2013 behind.