Nico Rosberg wins in Brazil to set up Mercedes F1 Abu Dhabi showdown Lewis Hamilton's holy grail-esque pursuit of victory at Interlagos, the shrine to his great hero Ayrton Senna, goes on after he was beaten here by his rival Nico Rosberg. Hamilton is still favourite for the world championship which will be decided at the final race in Abu Dhabi on 23 November with the contentious awarding of double points. There, whatever his Mercedes team-mate Rosberg does, Hamilton knows first or second will give him his second world title. He surely deserves it for he still leads Rosberg 10-5 in race wins this season. Hamilton was second and the local hero Felipe Massa third for Williams, with Jenson Button, amid all his despondency about the likelihood of losing his McLaren seat to Fernando Alonso next year, a creditable fourth. This was Mercedes" 11th one-two result of the season, beating the 10 enjoyed by McLaren in the dominant days of Senna and Alain Prost in 1988. They will end the season as they began it, the class act of the field. It is a late return to form by Rosberg whose previous victory had come in the German Grand Prix in July. However, it confirmed his complete dominance of the weekend here for he had won not only the three free practice runs on Friday and Saturday but also the qualifying session to decide the grid placings. The German's victory closed the gap between the two to 17 points in Hamilton's favour. The scoring system in Abu Dhabi will award 50 points for the winner so this is not a big issue, though Hamilton was clearly dismayed to have the momentum of his five-race winning streak broken. Hamilton generally was the faster driver in the race - he set the fastest lap - but his hopes of passing Rosberg fell apart on the 28th of the 71 laps. He spun at the Descida do Lago, running wide when he attempted to correct oversteer as he went into the corner. According to the maths men at Sky F1, Hamilton would have emerged from the pit lane three-tenths of a second ahead of Rosberg without that spin. At the end of the lap the 29-year-old came in for his second tyre stop so he was running on old rubber at the time. Hamilton showed all his old brio to fight back from this setback, shredding a seven-second deficit to get back to a challenging position within DRS range. But in the end he was forced to settle for second by an extremely resilient Rosberg. Rosberg had got away well and came in for his first stop on lap seven, one before Hamilton but it was the second stop during which the race was decided. Rosberg again came in earlier, on lap 26, when Hamilton was less than two seconds behind. The Briton stayed out and put in a blinder, the quickest lap of the race to that point. Again he remained out of the pits to do a lap which could well have led to him clinching the race but that spin cost him seven seconds and, in all probability, the race. The biggest cheer of the race went to Massa for completing the podium even though there was a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane in his first stop. At his last there was much amusement - though not for him - when he accidentally drove into the McLaren pit. Massa remains hugely important to the Brazilian Grand Prix. These mistakes should have played into the hands of his normally dominant Williams team-mate, Valtteri Bottas, but the Finn, fourth early in the race, had a lengthy first pitstop that must have felt like an aeon and found recovery beyond him; he finished 10th after being lapped. Button at times evoked memories of his epic victory here in 2012 and his overtake on the outside of Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari, 10 laps from the end, may be his most treasured memory of the race. Behind him came the forgotten (four times) world champion, Sebastian Vettel, who might have been surprised by the muscular tussle given him by McLaren's Kevin Magnussen at the start of the race. Vettel's team-mate, the Australian Daniel Ricciardo, was forced to retire shortly in the other Red Bull before the halfway stage due to a problem with his front suspension. After the fifth-placed Vettel came Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen on yet another so-so day for the men in red. The grand prix once again belonged to the Silver Arrows. Bring on Abu Dhabi.