MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo's charmed run ends

Daniel Ricciardo's long run of points finishes in Formula One has come to an end, but he's guaranteed third place in the world championship.

Nico Rosberg won the Brazilian Grand Prix at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo today, although teammate Lewis Hamilton was the quicker driver.

The pair gave Mercedes a record 11th one-two finish in a season and now fight out the drivers' title between them on November 23 in the season finale in Abu Dhabi, where the race will carry double the usual points.

In essence, Hamilton – 10 times a winner this year – only needs to finish second if Rosberg – a five-time victor now this season – wins the last race.

There are other permutations if they finish down the track in Abu Dhabi, but such is the dominance and reliability of the Mercs that it's hard to imagine anything other than another quinella at a circuit where history says there will be few incidents and little overtaking.

Brazilian Felipe Massa was a hugely popular third in his home race, despite a five-second penalty for exceeding the pitlane speed limit and initially stopping at the McLaren pits rather than his Williams team's for his last tyre change.

Jenson Button showed he has more to offer F1 yet, amid speculation Abu Dhabi will be his final GP, with his second fourth place for McLaren in the past three races – and five places and more than 20 seconds ahead of his young Danish teammate, Kevin Magnussen.

The first four cars were Mercedes-powered, with Sebastien Vettel fifth in his Red Bull-Renault and Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen sixth and seventh for Ferrari, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, who deserves to be in a better team than Force India. The "Incredible Hulk" has been in the points 14 times in the 18 GPs this year.

Ricciardo's Red Bull-Renault had a front suspension failure just beyond mid-race, which meant his first non-finish since the second round of the championship in Malaysia at the end of March.

He had scored points – in other words finished in the top 10 – in 15 consecutive races since then and is the only driver other than Hamilton and Rosberg to have notched a win this season with his triumphs in Canada, Hungary and Belgium.

Despite the non-finish in Brazil, Ricciardo cannot lose third place in the championship, with multiple champions Vettel and Alonso and one-time champions Button and Raikkonen among those too far behind him.

"When I went into turn one the car went to the right and I knew there was a problem," Ricciardo said.

"I came into the pits and the team told me it was suspension failure and we retired.

"It had been a bit of a boring race.

"We were close to everyone but not close enough to have many fights; I would have liked to have had a bit more fun, but it didn't really happen.

"It's a shame, but I had a pretty good run until now, so I can't be too greedy.

"It would be good to finish on the podium at the final race of the season."

Rosberg's winning margin was 1.457 seconds but his advantage had been about seven seconds after Hamilton spun at one-third distance as he seemed set to pounce on the lead as he had done in Austin, Texas, a week earlier.

In "Hammertime" – when his crew orders him to give maximum effort in the hope of leapfrogging into the lead as his teammate pits for a tyre change – Hamilton clocked a stunning lap and was instructed to do another.

But his tyres were shot and his car got out of shape as he locked the rear end and then he half-spun, losing several seconds.

While Hamilton was clearly the quicker driver he could not bridge the gap to Rosberg and overtake him.

Mercedes' latest one-two beat the 1988 record of 10 by McLaren in the days of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

Rosberg's victory was his first since Germany in July – 113 days ago – and came after five straight by Hamilton.

It also was the 150th F1 GP victory for Germany – 91 of them having been scored by Michael Schumacher, who is still making a slow recovery to anything like normal health after his skiing accident more than 10 months ago.

Rosberg and Hamilton have been on the podium 15 times each this season, but Hamilton – with twice as many wins – would be the more deserving world champion.

Unless there is a surprise victor in Abu Dhabi, it will be the first year since 2007 that F1 has had only two teams win races.

Swiss team Sauber, once so competitive, remains pointless this year and it, Force India and Lotus are getting no joy in calls for a greater slice of F1's financial pie.

Marussia, which has two points from the ninth place in the Monaco GP by French driver Jules Bianchi who is still critically ill after his horrific crash in the wet Japanese GP, won't come out of administration after missing the past two GPs.

Caterham, pointless and last of the 11 teams, also has missed the Austin and Sao Paulo races, is in administration too, but is trying to make Abu Dhabi on the back of crowd-funding.

F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone has repeated that "we don't want begging bowls" to keep teams alive.

"If people can't afford to be in F1 they have to find something else to do," he said.

"People say F1 is in crisis. Absolute nonsense. We've had a couple of teams in crisis."

Sauber's woman team principal Monisha Kaltenborn has said it is ridiculous that F1 has "a turnover of billions of dollars and yet we are not in a position to keep 11 teams alive".

Ecclestone has made noises about trying to disperse extra money to Force India, Lotus and Sauber – perhaps from the shares of F1's private equity majority owner CVC and the five top teams, or perhaps that which would have gone to Marussia and Caterham had they survived – but it is idle talk as there won't be the unanimous agreement that would require.

The three remaining battler teams were talked out of a boycott of the Texas race but may renew it for Abu Dhabi if they don't get any joy – but any non-appearance could backfire on them.

Despite their difficulties, Sauber, Lotus and Force India are likely to press ahead with new cars for next season's opener in Melbourne, but the big question mark will be over whether they last much beyond that.