With forecasts on Friday predicting heavy rain for the 2012 F1 Grand Prix of Brazil in Sao Paulo, many teams had one eye on set-up considerations throughout the build-up to the race. But one driver shrugging off questions about his car set-up was pole sitter Lewis Hamilton.
"Generally nowadays you don't even really have much of a wet set-up," he told reporters on Saturday after qualifying. "It's not like in karting when you soften everything off.
"The set-up in the dry and the wet is very, very similar - apart from ride heights maybe,' he explained. "We've just set the car to attack the qualifying and we don't know what's going to happen [in the race]."
Over at Mercedes - the team that Hamilton will move to after ending his six-year tenure at
McLaren this weekend - Michael Schumacher was blaming a decision to go for a wet-set-up for his own slump in qualifying on Saturday.
Many pundits in the paddock felt that
Ferrari had opted for a similar wet set-up gambit in their bid to boost
Fernando Alonso to the 2012 title ahead of Sebastian Vettel, but Alonso echoed Hamilton's dismissive line on the importance of set-up in the modern era.
"F1 is dominated by aerodynamics," he said. "We ran with maximum downforce in dry and same in the wet so no big changes today, no gamble. It is minimum changes."
Although early forecasts pointed toward a "hundred per cent chance" of rain on Sunday, the outlook has improved substantially and now suggest that there is less than a 40 per cent chance of rain this afternoon for the race. However, showers could still play a major role in the season finale even if they are relatively brief and light
"I think the weather is going to be tricky," said Hamilton of the uncertain outlook. "It's definitely going to make it more of a lottery."
"Interlagos can be very hit and miss, the little showers can just generate from anywhere and surprise you pretty quickly," said Red Bull's Mark Webber, who will start immediately behind Hamilton from third place on the Interlagos grid.