When it all went down to the wire: The history of F1's World Championship deciders

The 2014 Abu Dhabi GP will represent the 28th time in Formula 1’s 65-year history that the battle for the Drivers’ Championship has gone down to the final race of the season.

While some of the most memorable races that have settled championships have taken place before the final round of the year – the most famous being Senna and Prost’s Suzuka collisions of 1989 and 1990, both of which were at the penultimate stage of the season – there’s always something just a little extra special about a win-or-bust showdown at the final race.

So here, in reverse chronological order, we recall some of the most famous down-to-the-wire deciders…

Brazil 2012: Vettel v Alonso

The most recent of F1’s title showdowns and undeniably one of the very best. While the Interlagos finale of two years ago lacked the isolated golden ‘moment’ that often ensures a decider goes down in the annals – think Hamilton’s final-corner pass of Glock in 2008 or Nigel Mansell’s spectacular tyre blow of ’86 – what it certainly did have was a narrative of unpredictability running right through its 71-lap distance.

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Heading into the weekend and reigning double champion Sebastian Vettel held a 13-point lead over Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and only needed to finish fourth to secure a third straight crown. Having finished on the podium in the previous six races, winning four of them to overturn his rival’s large mid-season title advantage, Vettel seemed destined to be crowned champion again.

What followed was arguably the biggest scare of what proved to be a four-year era of domination for the Red Bull driver. 

The title had appeared to be Alonso’s after Vettel, trying to recover from a poor start, spun on lap one after tagging Bruno Senna’s Williams under braking at the end of the backstraight. Not only did the hefty collision drop the German driver to the back, but it caused significant damage to the left-rear side of his Red Bull.

A DNF initially seemed inevitable but Vettel, despite being down on aerodynamic performance, fought on in the drizzly rain and eventually finished sixth to Alonso's second, giving him the title by a scant three points.

Pre-race standings: 1. Vettel - 273 points, 2, Alonso - 260 points.
Post-race standings: 1. Vettel - 281 points, 2. Alonso - 278 points.

Abu Dhabi 2010: Alonso v Webber v Vettel v Hamilton

F1’s hitherto only four-way championship decider. After a season full of twists of turns, the top four in the championship were separated by just 24 points entering the final weekend of the season. Frankly, although mathematically both in the hunt, the prospects of Vettel and particularly Hamilton were slim given they were respectively 15 and 24 points behind title leader Alonso in the standings.

The battle for the crown was therefore expected to be a duel between Alonso and the other Red Bull of Mark Webber, who trailed the Spaniard by a seemingly more surmountable eight points. However, against all those predictions, the season and the title battle turned decisively at the first round of pitstops when Ferrari pitted Alonso to cover a struggling Webber and only succeeded in dropping their man into traffic.

Although Webber could only finish eighth, Alonso was to come a cropper as well. For 37 laps the Ferrari driver tried and failed to find a way past Vitaly Petrov’s Ren