Force India’s Vitantonio Liuzzi is set to receive a five-place grid penalty from the Interlagos race stewards after his team decided his car needs a new gearbox following his accident in qualifying.

Thunderstorms had been predicted for Interlagos on Saturday, and the forecast proved devastatingly accurate as heavy rain turned qualifying into the longest session ever held in Formula One history.

As the battle for the world championship heads to the final wire in the last two races, points leader Jenson Button has admitted that he would ‘hate’ his Brawn GP team mate Rubens Barrichello were he to snatch the title from his grasp at the 11th hour.

Interlagos is a circuit of contrasting extremes, combining slow hairpins with one of the longest straights of the season.

Although Interlagos isn’t hosting the season finale this year – that honour falls to Abu Dhabi – the Brazilian Grand Prix could see the 2009 title decided. And if the action this weekend is even a little like that of last year’s race, then get ready to be treated to a tremendous showdown

News that Toyota’s Timo Glock is to miss this weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix after his Suzuka qualifying crash comes as a bitter blow to a driver on the hunt for a fourth podium and – if rumours are to believed – a seat for 2010. But for the Japanese team’s third driver Kamui Kobayashi, Glock’s Interlagos absence represents the biggest opportunity of his motor racing career to date

Just one month after confirmation of their entry to the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship, the Lotus F1 Team is already heading into the windtunnel with a scale model of their first Formula One car. The as yet undesignated model is the product of the recent collaboration between the team’s chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne and technical partners, and represents an important step in preparations for next season, as Gascoyne explains…

Force India’s chairman and team principal Dr Vijay Mallya confirmed on Wednesday that Otmar Szafnauer is to join the team as its new chief operating officer. Szafnauer is to replace Simon Roberts, who was in place for a one year secondment from McLaren Applied Technologies as part of the technical partnership between the two teams. “Otmar was selected by myself in full consultation with McLaren to replace Simon, who has now completed his secondment with Force India,” said Mallya.

All Brawn GP’s Jenson Button has to do to become world champion at this weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix is finish third, regardless of whether title rivals Rubens Barrichello or Sebastian Vettel wins. On his early season form that would have been easy, but his last podium finish was at Monza last month and neither Singapore nor Japan yielded much in the way of strong points-scoring results…

Welcome to the 16th and penultimate round of the 2009 FIA Formula One World Championship, the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. It looks like being a wet weekend, with thunderstorms and an ambient temperature high of 27 degrees Celsius on Thursday giving way to showers for the remaining three days as the temperature slides down to 18 or 19 degrees…