MOTORSPORT: Aussie raging bull v Spanish matador

Webber's teammate Sebastian Vettel is a longer shot for the title but could play a decisive hand in the outcome.

Alonso has 246 points; Webber 238 and Vettel 231, with a race win worth 25 points, second place 18, third 15, fourth 12th and the scoring down to one point for 10th. It's not hard to envisage this trio filling the podium in Abu Dhabi on Sunday -- early Monday, Australian time.

Australian fans should note that the race start is two hours later than usual for GPs on that side of the world -- at midnight, eastern Australian summer time.

There has been endless talk about whether Red Bull will invoke team orders if they're needed for one of its own to become champion. But it has gone beyond that now.

Red Bull won't use team orders but, according to team principal Christian Horner, will leave it to its drivers to decide whether to help the other. The rules forbid team orders but not drivers deciding themselves whether to assist a teammate.

Most importantly for us Australians is whether German Vettel, if he cannot take the title himself, will be prepared to help Webber. The animosity between the pair this year would suggest not.

And Dietrich Mateschitz, the Red Bull energy drink tycoon who pays the team's bills but stays out of its day-to-day affairs, has said he would rather miss out on the F1 drivers' title than use tactics like Ferrari did at the German GP, when its Brazilian driver Felipe Massa handed over the lead to Alonso -- and the team was fined US$100,000, but Alonso not denied the victory.

"We don't manipulate things like Ferrari do," Mateshitz said. "We have never even thought about it. A second place under correct circumstances might be better than a win on grounds of orders and confirmations.

"(Red Bull will) Let the two drivers race and whatever will be will be. If Alonso wins we will have been unlucky.

"I predict a Hollywood ending, with the worst scenario we don't become champion.

"We'll do it next year. But our philosophy stays the same because this is sport and it must remain sport."

Some, including renowned F1 correspondent Peter Windsor (he who was at the centre of the US F1 team project that failed early this year) believe that Vettel  would rather aid Alonso to win the championship than Webber.

But there are at least two reasons why, if Vettel is in a position to help Webber, he will.

Irrespective of Mateschitz's public utterances, Red Bull -- indeed any F1 team -- could not afford to have a situation where it conspired against itself so that one of its own didn't win the world championship.

The other is that, with an eye on the future, and most likely next year, Vettel -- if he cannot win the title himself this season -- could effectively create a situation where Webber would be obliged to assist him next season.

The enmity between the pair has probably been overplayed, but this weekend they're playing for the grandest prize in motor racing. And, if one of them can't have it, surely it makes sense that they assist the other rather than let Alonso become the youngest triple world champion.

It must be galling for Vettel -- after being the pre-season favourite, and indeed for most of the year, as well as having had nine pole positions from the 18 races so far and won four (as many as Webber and one less than Alonso) -- to be only the third most likely to take the title.

But, at just 23 still, he's going to have plenty more opportunities. For Webber, at 34, there is probably only one more season anyway.

If Vettel were to help him out this weekend he would find it easy to return the favour next year.

Vettel is not only exceptionally fast but extremely clever. He may have come to realise that if he doesn't help Webber he could incur the wrath of the vast majority of the sport's fans globally -- and that may be a price not worth paying.

Vettel is the form driver, having led in Korea until his Renault engine blew and then won last weekend in Brazil. There's every chance he'll be in front again in Abu Dhabi.

That will make the point again that he is inevitably a world champion of the future, but he could leave a grand gesture until even the last lap before slowing to let Webber win the race if it will secure the world title for the Aussie -- and Red Bull.

Again, perhaps contrary to Mateschitz's statements, it is the driver title that counts, that carries the enduring kudos.

As stressed here so often over the course of the year, this has been the best world championship in F1's 60-year history.

Never before have there been four drivers still a chance of becoming champion at the last round -- McLaren's Lewis Hamilton is the fourth, albeit a 100-1 shot. In essence, Alonso needs to finish second if Webber wins.

For our man Webber victory -- something he hasn't tasted in the past six races, since the end of August -- would give him his best chance. Then he may still need to count on Vettel's help to ensure Alonso doesn't finish second.

Adrian Newey, the technical genius who created Red Bull's RB6 cars after previous world championship glory with Williams and McLaren, has urged Vettel to be "magnanimous" if he is in a position to be.

"We've always said we would leave the drivers to it," Newey said. "It's a drivers' championship, and that's how it should be. That means there shouldn't be team orders. If one of the (Red Bull) drivers is out of it, then I hope he would be magnanimous enough to help the other."

Win (the championship) or lose, it has been an almighty season for Webber.

It is a fairytale even he must have difficulty believing that, after all the heartache along the way over almost a decade in GP racing, he is on the verge of joining Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones as an Aussie F1 world champion. And he's in that position against arguably the most talented field in history, certainly in terms of the depth of talent.

Yet there will be a massive gap between pulling it off and not. He will be an immortal Australian sporting champion if does.

If not, in years to come, he will be remembered as a driver who came close to greatness without reaching the absolute summit.

Let's hope, even pray, he can do it. But it most likely won't be all in his hands. Almost certainly he's going to need a little help, perhaps a final lap handover, from his teammate.

The Supercars are at Tasmania's Symmons Plains this weekend and are back on the soft tyres that tend to spice up the racing.

That soft rubber has favoured championship leader James Courtney previously and he's certainly looking forward to it again at this round and next weekend's at Melbourne's Sandown.

The "grand final" is two weeks later at Sydney's Homebush. There are six races to be run in these remaining three rounds.

Courtney has 2521 points to Jamie Whincup's 2450. Barring disasters for either of them, particularly Whincup, in any of these remaining races the fight will go to the wire in Sydney.

There is a ton of talent behind them in the standings -- Craig Lowndes on 2255, Mark Winterbottom 2201, Garth Tander 2088 and Shane Van Gisbergen on 2040 -- but probably too far back to make a contest of the title.

Speculation continues to rage about Courtney's future -- and that of the Dick Johnson/Jim Beam Racing team with which he is having his best season in V8 Supercars.

The sale of half the team to mining magnate Nathan Tinkler has finally and officially fallen through.

Auto Action magazine reports this week that team founder Dick Johnson has secured the backing of a mystery group of investors to buy the half-share from forklift king Charlie Schwerkolt that Tinkler was to have taken before deciding he preferred to be a spectator rather than a team owner.

On the other hand, talk intensifies that Australian touring car racing's oldest team could fold at the end of the year -- and that sponsor Jim Beam is fed up with the disharmony and uncertainty.

Schwerkolt remains a contender either to buy out Johnson's half -- or start a new team, with Courtney as his driver.

Reports on Courtney's future home, particularly those linking him to Holden Racing Team in place of Will Davison, so infuriated Courtney's British-based expatriate Australian manager -- and new world touring car supremo -- Alan Gow that he issued an angry statement midweek.

It reiterated that Courtney's only driving contract at the minute was with DJR/Jim Beam, but it's no secret that there is a get-out clause if ownership of that team changes.

Ford is keen to keep Courtney in its "family", perhaps in a car entered by Schwerkolt but built by Ford Performance Racing.

While the DJR wrangle, the upshot of a falling out between Johnson and Schwerkolt after the latter rescued the team from collapse in 2008, is at least providing some news for V8 Supercars while the focus is so much on F1 it is a pity it has become so prolonged and obviously bitter.

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