Traction control had previously been used in Formula 1 for the past seven seasons, and was officially made legal and reintroduced by the FIA at the 2001 Spanish Grand Prix.

For the event, the largest-scale repairs in the last 35 years were carried out at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, to fundamentally solve problems with the track surface.

[5] To facilitate the work, the circuit was closed and no events were held in the five months immediately preceding the race.

[6] On 17 October, Companhia Paulista de Trens Metropolitanos (CPTM) began to operate the new station of the Line C, Autódromo, near the circuit.

This was the first three-way title fight in the final race of the F1 season since the 1986 Australian Grand Prix, which saw Alain Prost become champion, ahead of Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet.

[15] In the second practice session, Lewis Hamilton led McLaren to a 1–2 finish, with the track improving over time.

[17] The first session of qualifying saw the two Spykers of Adrian Sutil and Sakon Yamamoto plus the two Super Aguris of Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson eliminated, along with Kazuki Nakajima, who was making his debut in the Williams, replacing the retiring Alexander Wurz.

Nico Rosberg made the top ten for Williams, and qualified on row 5 alongside Red Bull's David Coulthard.

[18] Their fellow championship contender Kimi Räikkönen qualified third, while his Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa took the ninth pole position of his career at his home Grand Prix.

Only 21 cars were aligned on the grid, because of problems on the Spyker of Adrian Sutil, who started the race from the pit lane.

At the start, the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen were faster, with the Finn passing Lewis Hamilton on the outside.

Just minutes later, he suffered a gearbox problem: on the Reta Oposta, he failed to find gears and slowed down, to be passed by most cars on the track.

By that lap, Hamilton climbed to eleventh, having passed Barrichello, Ralf Schumacher, Anthony Davidson, Takuma Sato and Kazuki Nakajima, and having taken advantage from the retirement of Mark Webber, who was running in fifth position.

Alonso, Trulli, Vettel and Hamilton pitted on lap 22, with the Spaniard keeping hards, while Hamilton switched his strategy to a three-stopper (a rather risky strategy on the track which features the longest pit lane of the whole season): he carried less fuel than Alonso and switched to soft tyres.

The Finn set record lap times in the process, which meant he rejoined the race into the lead, 2 seconds ahead of Massa.

At the chequered flag, Räikkönen was first, winning the race and the World Championship by one point, taking his first victory in Brazil, having been a runner-up on three consecutive occasions.

The race gained an average of nine million viewers in the United Kingdom on ITV1, which was the highest for Formula One in seven years.

[20][21][22] In Spain, television broadcasters Telecinco and TV3 had a total average audience of 9.0 million viewers, with a market share of 77.8% in Asturias and 69.2% in Madrid.