It was 30 years ago today that Alan Jones clinched his Formula One world championship by winning the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.

"It's obviously the best memory of my whole racing career, but also that 1980 season," Jones, now 63, says.

He celebrated a week later by driving the finest race of his life, this time winning the United States GP after having dropped to 14th in the field after an excursion off the Watkins Glen track on the first lap.

Jones' inspiration, apart from his late father Stan, himself a successful racing driver, had been Jack Brabham, the Australian who took on the world of F1 and won three world titles - in 1959, 1960 and 1966, the last of them in a car called a Brabham and with an Aussie-built Repco engine.

Brabham, now in his mid-80s, became the first man to be made a knight of the realm for his contribution to motor sport.

Now the planets appear to be aligning for Mark Webber to become Australia's third F1 world champion.

Four races to go this season, perhaps only three if the new Korean GP falls through, with doubts persisting about whether the Yeongam circuit will be completed and approved for the fourth weekend of October.

Webber has a bigger lead now than before last Sunday night's Singapore GP, even though he didn't win under the bright lights in the Asian island state.

Instead he was third, half a minute behind Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and the Australian's Red Bull Racing teammate, German Sebastian Vettel.

Webber, never higher than fourth in the championship in his previous eight years, now has 202 points.

Spaniard Alonso, world champion with Renault in 2005 and 2006, is up to second on 191.

Britain's Lewis Hamilton, champion in 2008 and only five points behind Webber before Singapore, has dropped to third on 182 - after finishing (but winning) just one of the past four GPs.

Vettel has 181 points and last year's champion, Britain's Jenson Button, Hamilton's McLaren-Mercedes teammate this year, has 177 - so he's 25 points behind Webber.

But 25 points is just one race win, although the other four contenders are unlikely to not score if Button wins the next GP at Japan's Suzuka track on October 10.

The fight looks likely to go to the wire in Abu Dhabi on November 14, a week after the Brazilian GP at Interlagos in Sao Paulo.

Red Bull Racing won in Japan, Brazil and Abu Dhabi last year - with Vettel victorious twice and Webber at Interlagos - and leads the constructors' championship this season by 24 points from McLaren, 383 to 359.

That is no guarantee of anything in the remaining races, although Red Bull's Renault-powered RB6 cars should be suited again to all the remaining tracks.

However, Ferrari has won the past two GPs, courtesy of Alonso, but the team's and his chances are clouded by the prospect of a 10-place grid penalty when, almost inevitably, they need to use a ninth engine for the season.

It could all change for Webber as soon as Suzuka, but at the minute the gods are smiling on him.

For so long the victim of wretched luck, in Singapore he drove the last 25 laps with a right front tyre that had no right to remain on its rim after a collision with Hamilton.

"He was very, very lucky - it was just 5mm from slipping off," said Hirohide Hamashima, director of motorsport development for F1's tyre supplier, Bridgestone.

"If it had slipped off then the pressure would probably have gone down, so Mark was lucky there.

"If there had been very high-speed left-hand corners here (in Singapore) then the tyre would have moved a little bit more and it would have been finished."

Hamashima said he had never seen a tyre remain inflated like it  before.

"Over 25 laps is incredible," he said.

No wonder Webber was so happy to come away with third place from a disappointing fifth on the grid.

He had thought his race was run after the Hamilton contact.

"I had a very big vibration at the front," he said.

It made keeping his grip on the steering wheel difficult and left his hands blistered.

"We dodged a bullet in keeping going," Webber said.

"The tyres at the end ... there was nothing left of them."

Webber knows the championship battle may ebb and flow more yet, but among those now tipping him for the title, along with lots of bookmakers, are F1's septuagenarian supremo Bernie Ecclestone and Scottish triple world champion Sir Jackie Stewart.

Vettel was Ecclestone's pre-season prediction but he now says of the 21-year-old: "He can win another year. This one is down to Webber.

"It is his turn to make this his title.

"He has the ambition and the talent and he would be a great champion for F1.

"It doesn't matter that three of the contenders (Alonso, Hamilton and Button) have titles - he will go all the way."

Stewart, world champion in 1969, 1971 and 1973, says that, at 34, Webber has "got it all together".

"Red Bull are the best placed of all the teams and Mark Webber has the best chance to win it ... their focus should be on Mark now," Stewart said.

Webber has amazed himself at how relaxed he has remained as the climax nears.

"I'm very much at ease. There's no point getting panicked and stressed about things," he said.

As pleased as he is to be in the box seat, Webber is delighted that "the fans have a sensational championship to watch". Arguably the best in the sport's 60 years.

And, while Australia may have its third F1 world champion within weeks, already there are other genuine hopes racing towards the premier league of motor racing.

Perth's Daniel Ricciardo will take part in a big test for youngsters on the verge of F1 in Abu Dhabi immediately after the season finale.

Ricciardo is already Red Bull's GP reserve driver and at last year's end-of-season trial for emerging stars blew away 21 rivals from around the globe.

And Scott Pye, 20, from Mt Gambier, has just won the British Formula Ford Championship.

With 12 race victories for the season, Pye is now setting his sights on following Ricciardo's tracks through the British Formula Three Championship, from which more F1 drivers have graduated than any other series on earth.

The days of Brabham and Jones are long gone, Webber is today's man, and still the talent keeps on coming through.