Formula One: Mark Webber win rounds off great year for Red Bull

Vettel, who had already secured the Formula 1 title, finished second after letting Webber get past him almost halfway through the race at the 4.3km (2.6-mile) Interlagos track in Sao Paulo.

Britain’s Jenson Button of McLaren finished third to win second place in the drivers’ standings after a solid season.

Webber easily passed Vettel on lap 30 after his team-mate reduced his pace on being told by the team that there were problems with his gearbox.

“Very early I got the call that we had to manage the gearbox problem,” Vettel said. “It sounded pretty severe. It started to get worse. My main priority was to finish the race.”

Webber finished third in the championship with the victory, his first of the season. It was his seventh overall in F1, and the second in Brazil after winning at Interlagos in 2009.

“Today was a good grand prix for me. It’s not a bad thing to finish the year like this,” Webber said. “I felt good all weekend. It would have been nice to have a race all the way through [with Vettel] but he had a bit of a problem.”

Vettel, the winner in Brazil in 2010, won 11 races this season but finishes the year without victories in the last two races. He retired on the first lap in Abu Dhabi following a puncture.

The second-place finish came a day after the two-time champion captured his 15th pole position of the season to break Nigel Mansell’s 19-year record.

The 24-year-old German was trying to win his 12th race of the year, which would allow him to finish the season only one victory short of Michael Schumacher’s record set in 2004.

“I think we had a pretty amazing season and it would be over the top being upset now,” Vettel said. “So we take the second place, the one-two finish for the team, which is great.”

Vettel clinched the title four races ago, at the Japanese GP.

Red Bull had already won the constructors’ championship, with McLaren finishing second and Ferrari third.

On a dry track despite forecasts of rain in South America’s biggest city, Webber took the lead when Vettel gave his teammate plenty of space at the end of the main straight.

Red Bull told Vettel on lap 14 that data from his car showed a gearbox problem and asked him to short shift when in second gear. The problem then got worse and the team later said Vettel had to short shift in every gear, considerably slowing his lap times.

After Webber got past, though, Vettel again increased his pace and had no problem staying behind his teammate. He even set fastest laps a couple of times. Webber eventually finished with the race’s best lap.

Vettel dismissed suggestions that team orders may have come into play to try to help Webber finish second in the points standings.

“We had no choice,” Vettel said. “More and more I was forced to slow down and at the end I was not using second gear.”

Fernando Alonso of Ferrari was fourth and crowd favourite Felipe Massa, in his 100th race for Ferrari, was fifth. Adrian Sutil of Force India finished sixth, and Nico Rosberg of Mercedes was seventh.

Lewis Hamilton, the winner in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, had a gearbox problem on his McLaren and eventually retired on lap 48.

Seven-time champion Schumacher of Mercedes had a punctured left-rear tyre while trying to pass Bruno Senna of Renault at the end of the main straight. Schumacher had already got past Senna when the Brazilian’s car touched his tyre and forced him to make a pitstop that led to a 15th-place finish.

Senna also had to make a stop because of damage to his car and eventually received a drive-through penalty for the incident and finished 17th.

Adrian Sutil finished sixth for Force India, with team-mate Paul di Resta eighth – securing sixth in the constructors’ championship for the team – with Nico Rosberg in his Mercedes sandwiched between the pair in seventh. Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi was ninth, while Vitaly Petrov claimed the final point for Renault.