As the commentators expressed at the end of the race, anybody who picked the trifecta of Button, Barrichello and Trulli did exceptionally well. I think Brawn’s performance in their first testing session let everyone know that they meant business, and despite being the last team confirmed, the last car revealed and the last car tested they came out well and truly on top with the first win of the season.
Button had things go his way pretty much all race, the only things that seemed to threaten were the regular safety cars which brought him back to the rest of the field. Behind him there was a little more happening. McLaren’s weekend went from bad to worse with Kovalainen’s race ending shortly after the first corner incident that also involved Heidfeld, Barichello and Webber.
Ferrari looked to have decent speed early on but Kimi had issues and finished 16, and Massa crashed out 13 laps from the end. While his teammates races was short Hamilton, who started from the rear of the grid gradually clawed his way through the field and wound up finishing 4th. I dare say that given who the rest of his weekend had gone he was pretty happy with that.
Trulli and Glock from Toyota, who had both received grid penalties overnight for an illegal rear wing, stayed consistent to finish 3rd and 5th respectively. Sebastien Buemi had a strong debut race for “Team Sebastien” picking up a point for his efforts, closely followed by his teammate Bourdais.
Webber again hit bad luck in his home GP after being tangled up in the first corner incident with Kovalainen and co, he had to pit to get his front wing replaced and from then on he was basically stuck at the back of the pack, although the brain snap of Vettel and Kubica gave him a couple of extra spots right at the end.
And then there was that brain snap. With only a couple of laps left sitting second Vettel had a bad exit out of one corner and on the run in the next corner Kubica looked to go around the outside, Vettel hit the stoppers (too) late, the touched mid corner which half spun Kubica, both ended up with damaged front ends.
They looked like they might have gotten away with it until they both reached the next bend and promptly found that their cars weren’t steering as well as they had been, Kubica hit the wall hard removing both left hand wheels in the process and Vettal stuck the left hand corner of his car into the wall breaking the suspension. Vettel tried to limp it back to the pits, but gave up before he got there. Because of their incident the safety car came out again and when it peeled off into the pits there was just one corner left.
The odd moves of Vettel and Kubica promoted Barrichello (who has now started more Formula 1 GPs than anybody else in history) to second to complete the dream 1-2 finish for Brawn GP on debut. Its a nice change to see someone other than Ferrari or McLaren win, so lets hope that they can keep it up and it wasn’t just a one off fluke.
Full results after the jump.
Provisional Results
| Pos | No | Driver | Team | Laps | Time/Retired | Grid | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22 | Jenson Button | Brawn-Mercedes | 58 | Winner | 1 | 10 |
| 2 | 23 | Rubens Barrichello | Brawn-Mercedes | 58 | +0.8 secs | 2 | 8 |
| 3 | 9 | Jarno Trulli | Toyota | 58 | +1.6 secs | 20 | 6 |
| 4 | 1 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 58 | +2.9 secs | 18 | 5 |
| 5 | 10 | Timo Glock | Toyota | 58 | +4.4 secs | 19 | 4 |
| 6 | 7 | Fernando Alonso | Renault | 58 | +4.8 secs | 10 | 3 |
| 7 | 16 | Nico Rosberg | Williams-Toyota | 58 | +5.7 secs | 5 | 2 |
| 8 | 12 | Sebastien Buemi | STR-Ferrari | 58 | +6.0 secs | 13 | 1 |
| 9 | 11 | Sebastien Bourdais | STR-Ferrari | 58 | +6.2 secs | 17 | |
| 10 | 20 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 58 | +6.3 secs | 16 | |
| 11 | 6 | Nick Heidfeld | BMW Sauber | 58 | +7.0 secs | 9 | |
| 12 | 21 | Giancarlo Fisichella | Force India-Mercedes | 58 | +7.3 secs | 15 | |
| 13 | 14 | Mark Webber | RBR-Renault | 57 | +1 Lap | 8 | |
| 14 | 15 | Sebastian Vettel | RBR-Renault | 56 | +2 Laps | 3 | |
| 15 | 5 | Robert Kubica | BMW Sauber | 55 | +3 Laps | 4 | |
| 16 | 4 | Kimi Räikkönen | Ferrari | 55 | +3 Laps | 7 | |
| Ret | 3 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 45 | +13 Laps | 6 | |
| Ret | 8 | Nelsinho Piquet | Renault | 24 | +34 Laps | 14 | |
| Ret | 17 | Kazuki Nakajima | Williams-Toyota | 17 | +41 Laps | 11 | |
| Ret | 2 | Heikki Kovalainen | McLaren-Mercedes | 0 | +58 Laps | 12 |
It was a great race from Jenson. I really hope that this is his year (not just because I have him in my dream team). With the emergence of Lewis Hamilton I got the impression that Jenson had been forgotten somewhat but now he’s back on the map in a big way.
Let’s just hope that the funky rear wing thing that Brawn have will pass an FIA investigation.
Nice site Dean. The GP was great, with Branson’s backing Brawn will be the team to watch. Disappointing for Mark Webber though , maybe next year!