F1 Championship: For eight months Formula One laboured under the almost certain notion that the championship would come down to a battle between two men.
As the tension mounted and the words between McLaren's Fernando Alonso and the season's sensation Lewis Hamilton grew ever more bitter and incendiary, there were few arguing that a third contender could steal in and take the crown from under their noses.
In the end it was the man who, characteristically, said least about his chances that seized the opportunity no one believed existed. Kimi Raikkonen is Formula One world champion.
Coming into the final race of the season in Brazil yesterday, Raikkonen was the outsider. Seven points adrift of series leader Hamilton and three behind Alonso, the Ferrari driver was largely ignored.
The story would surely all be about the McLaren drivers. Their personal feud, the divisive spying scandal that enveloped their team, the romance of the possibility the wunderkind Hamilton would take the title at the first time of asking - all of that made their story irresistible.
Raikkonen strolled through the Interlagos paddock almost unmolested. Hardly suprising. For the Finn to take the title he would need to win and his rivals would need to encounter disaster. And so it transpired.
Raikkonen, starting third, leapfrogged Hamilton to steal second at the start as team-mate Felipe Massa held the lead. Alonso stole third as Hamilton, held up by the Ferraris, took fourth. Not enough.
But when Hamilton ran wide at turn four and dropped to eighth and then suffered a mystery problem early on to drop to 18th, suddenly the possible became almost probable.
Late in the race Raikkonen set blistering times to eclipse Massa as the duo made their second stops. Raikkonen led, with the bulwark of Massa between him and Alonso. Hamilton, after all his problems, was stuck in seventh. If everyone ahead of the young Englishman finished, Raikkonen would win the race and the title.
And as the Finn crossed the line his race engineer got on the radio. "That's it, Kimi. Hamilton is seventh. We win the title by one point."
What had seemed impossible in the morning had come to pass.
"I wasn't really 100 per cent sure in the final laps when Lewis was seventh in case someone ahead of him might stop so I was just really waiting and it took a long time to finally hear that we won it," Raikkonen confessed.
"For sure we weren't in the strongest position at many points this season but we always believed we could recover and do a better job than the others," he added. "We didn't give up and it was good in the end we came from behind to reduce the gap and go and win both championships. I'm very happy - it's an amazing, amazing day."
Some will argue that Raikkonen has not dominated enough to be deemed a worthy champion. In truth the only place he was never a contender was in the number of column inches devoted to his challenge.
In the circus that surrounded Alonso and Hamilton, Raikkonen was a sideshow. In the end he took top billing. His six wins, most of them emphatic destructions of his rivals, attest to his championship credentials.
If there was a fault it lay in the Finn's inconsistency. Like the proverbial wayward child, when he is good he is very good, but when he is bad he is usually horrid, seeming unconcerned whether he finishes second or 22nd.
If Raikkonen had found consistency to equal Hamilton's (nine podiums from his first nine races) or 2005 vintage Alonso, he would have won weeks ago.
As it is, there is plenty to celebrate in Raikkonen as champion. There is something "old-school F1" about the Ferrari driver. As befits a champion, there is something of the maverick about him.
He does not test and will not use race simulators, preferring simply to arrive and drive. He is single-minded in pursuit of his own ends. He is crushing in victory when he does win. If he doesn't he seems hardly bothered to compete.
He is, unlike so many on the grid, a law unto himself.
And in the best tradition of mavericks, Raikkonen has stormed out of left field to dash the dreams of more manufactured and more fancied title rivals.
When the sport looks back in years to come, the dry statistics will tell the story.
He simply beat his rivals by winning more races. And that is the hallmark of a real champion.