Hamburg - While Britain's Lewis Hamilton won the Formula One world title in the most dramatic fashion a prize for spot-on television coverage of the drama in Brazil could also go to the UK.

True to the Anglo-German set-up of the McLaren-Mercedes team, the ITV crew, along with Germany's RTL network, were among the race leaders when it came to explaining the unfolding drama in Sunday's thrilling - but for many, confusing - final laps.

Both broadcasts are likely to be shown again on Saturday at Mercedes' traditional season-ending Stars and Cars show with the whole team in Stuttgart.

As TV footage from around the world started appearing on internet sites such as YouTube in the post-race days it became obvious that viewers in some other countries were not so fortunate with their commentators in the dramatic finale.

When Hamilton dropped to sixth place with three laps to go behind the German Sebastian Vettel the title seemed to belong to Brazil's Felipe Massa.

But Hamilton then passed Germany's Timo Glock to go back into fifth on the final turn and claim the title as Massa's Ferrari team and the crowd were already celebrating.

The last-lap drama has been rated one of the most dramatic moments in world sport.

ITV's Martin Brundle and James Allen were fully up to this task. They even realized that Hamilton's fortune hinged on the fate of Glock, who had stayed on dry-weather tyres amid increased rainfall.

"It's all down to whether Glock can handle the rain," said former Formula One driver Brundle as soon as Vettel had passed Hamilton.

Brundle and Allen were then also on top of the action when it mattered.

"Is that Glock, is that Glock? It is. That's Glock," shouted Brundle.

James said: "My goodness me. Hamilton is back in position again ... The Ferrari boys are celebrating, they think they have won. They are wrong. They absolutely haven't."

The Germans from RTL were almost as alert.

"Watch out, Glock is on slicks," said former racing driver Christian Danner as the final lap approached. But he and fellow- commentator Heiko Wasser believed that Glock was too far ahead of Hamilton to be caught.

Not quite as quick as Brundle, they began shouting, "There is Timo Glock" just as Hamilton passed the German driver's Toyota. "Now he is on his way to the title after all."

German pay-TV channel Premiere also realized, after a brief moment of apparent surprise, that Hamilton had passed Glock and what it meant for the race and the championship. But it took commentator Jacques Schulz and Marc Surer, another former F1 driver, until after the finish to recall that Glock had actually been on slicks.

There was some momentary doubt when Schulz, who had correctly proclaimed Hamilton world champion, said: "Timo Glock it was he overtook? Right?"

"Why was Timo Glock so slow. Why?" Surer wondered.

In Brazil, Galvao Bueno was also perfectly aware what Hamilton's return to fifth place meant for his man Massa, as he simply said; "Na ultimate curva" ("the last corner") over and over before counting the drivers across the line.

At that stage Dutch TV man Olav Mol from RTL 7 was completely lost.

"Lewis lets it slip again for the second year," screamed the Dutch commentator as Hamilton was already shown to have crossed the line in the fifth place he needed to win.

"The disappointment of the McLaren team," he said to pictures of Hamilton's ecstatic pop star girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger - only to realize another few seconds later that "Hamilton is fifth after all. Hamilton is world champion" and shouting a profanity in English.

Mol has since acknowledged his mistake on his web-log. "The last stage was hectic. I completely missed the fact that Glock dropped, went off his line or slowed down. The TV pictures showed the rejoicing Massas..."

Croatian HRT2 commentators and those from Spain did slightly better but they did miss the deciding manoeuvre and only realized the outcome when Hamilton was listed as fifth on the screen.

The Spanish were about to announce Glock as fourth-place finisher, but when the three letters "VET" (German Sebastian Vettel) followed by "HAM" appeared they realized what had happened.

"Hamilton world champion," repeated one of the commetators while the other wondered, "What happened to Glock?" (dpa)