Did Sebastian Vettel deserve to become Formula 1’s new youngest ever triple world champion yesterday? Or would Fernando Alonso have been more deserving?

Shut up, it’s a nonsense question.

The question of who deserved it, however, is less stupid in the case of 10th place in the constructors championship. With that 10th place comes valuable TV money, and before the weekend, Marussia were leading that particular battle thanks to Timo Glock’s 12th place finish in Singapore.

That all changed in the closing stages of the Brazilian Grand Prix, however, as Vitaly Petrov passed Charles Pic for 11th place, giving Caterham that prestigious title of third worst constructor. Plus the small matter of the aforementioned telly cash.

Naturally, Marussia were disappointed to lose the position. In fact, team principal John Booth said that ‘disappointed’ “doesn’t even come close”. But did they realistically deserve to finish ahead of Caterham?

Let’s have a look at who – of Caterham, Marussia and HRT only – came top in qualifying and the race at each Grand Prix this year.

Paints a picture, doesn’t it? A green and yellow picture.

That’s to take nothing away from the progress that Marussia made this year though – and without KERS, let’s not forget. Caterham had KERS this season, and Marussia will next, so the battle should only be closer in 2013 – it’ll certainly be fairer.

And with HRT unlikely to feature on the grid, unless there’s a pretty big upset elsewhere, Caterham and Marussia will be fighting to avoid the ignominy of being F1′s worst team. Now that’s something to fight about.

Photo Credit
dawvon / David W. – Flickr – Some rights reserved