March 31st, 2009 at 11:09pm Under Racing
In an ever growing chorus of concern, the F1 drivers are unanimous in their dislike of F1 races held in the late afternoon. The effort to make the Grand Prix more palatable for European viewers, Bernie Ecclestone has asked Australia and this weeks race in Sepang to be held in the late afternoon. …
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March 31st, 2009 at 06:26pm Under Racing
The newly created F2 series, brainchild of FIA President Max Mosley, is starting to fill its rosters with talented, young drivers of every stripe. The cars, designed by Williams F1, will be driven in the series by new faces and one of those faces will be new female driver Natacha Gachnang.
Natacha…
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March 31st, 2009 at 04:17pm Under Racing
Could someone forward show #99 to Bridgestone
Bridgestone has announced that they expect the teams to face another big challenge with the soft tyres that will be used at this weekends Malaysian Grand Prix. This was an issue in Australia and its will be further complicated this weekend because they…
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March 31st, 2009 at 04:03pm Under Racing
RD1 is currently trying not to hyperventilate
McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh has warned that despite Lewis’s inherited P3, the team still has issues. Yeah, you don’t say - I’m pretty sure when you spend the whole weekend mid pack at best, you might still have some issues….
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March 31st, 2009 at 03:54pm Under Racing
Oh if only you knew about the KoD
Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali admitted that his non-finishing team has a pace issue and not a reliabilities issue. The also have a vodka rig issue but I’m pretty sure they’re trying to keep that internal to the team….
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March 31st, 2009 at 09:55am Under Racing
Jenson Button led all 58 laps of the Australian Grand Prix
After months of anticipation the first race of 2009 was a contest to savour and a result to remember. Jenson Button may have led every lap but Sebastian Vettel kept him honest throughout the race - before a controversial late clash with Robert Kubica.
Rubens Barrichello completed Brawn GP’s joy by taking second place, while Lewis Hamilton took a surprise third place from 18th on the grid.
The Brawn cars had mixed fortunes at the start - Button motored serenely down to the first corner while Barrichello got bogged down and was swamped by the chasing field.
That included Heikki Kovalainen, who tagged the back of the Brawn GP car, setting off a chain reaction which also claimed Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld. All bar Barrichello headed for the pits, and Kovalainen’s damage proved terminal.
The Ferraris, with KERS primed and super soft tyres, made lightning starts. Felipe Massa pounced on Robert Kubica off the line, and slotted past Nico Rosberg at turn three as well. Kimi Raikkonen followed him through top take up fifth behind Kubica, with Rosberg bumped back to sixth.
Button, meanwhile, had checked out - dropping Vettel by a massive 3.9s on the first lap. But Vettel, running with several laps’ less fuel, was able to keep Button’s lead down to around five seconds.
The Ferraris quickly ran into the shortcomings of the super-soft tyres: graining and the accompanying huge drop-off in performance. Rosberg launched an attack on Raikkonen on lap nine, squeezing by at turn one, allowing the chasing Barrichello to pounce. Barrichello clipped Raikkonen’s car, causing more damage to the front wing of his BGP001, but took fifth place off the 2007 champion.
Wasting no time, the red cars brought their pit stops forward. Raikkonen headed for the pits on the next lap to switch to the more durable medium compound. Massa followed on lap 11, as did Lewis Hamilton, who had also started one the super-soft tyres.
Hamilton had steered clear of the mayhem at the start to run 11th by lap three. Exploiting the brief performance of the super soft tyres and using his KERS boost he moved up to ninth by lap six, passing Nelson Piquet Jnr. But with the life gone from his tyres he had struggled to make an impression on Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams.
The other early stoppers were Jarno Trulli (lap ten) and Kubica (lap 12). Trulli, who had started from the pits along with team mate Timo Glock following their qualifying infringement, passed Hamilton for 14th shortly after his stop.
This left Button and Vettel at the front with Rosberg 27.3s behind thanks to spending so long stuck behind the struggling Massa. Behind him were Barrichello, Nakajima, Piquet, Sebastien Buemi and Giancalo Fisichella.
Vettel and Rosberg were the next to pit on lap 16, Rosberg losing time with a sticking front left wheel nut. Button responded by setting a new fastest lap of the race in anticipation of his first pit stop.
But on lap 18 Nakajima lost control of his FW31 on the kerb at the exit of turn four, and hit the barriers hard. The safety car was summoned while marshals retrieved the wrecked Williams.
Under last year’s rules this would have pole-axed Button’s chances, leaving him unable to pit for several laps. Thankfully, the ‘pit lane closure rules’ were wisely dropped over the winter, and Button was able to take his pit stop as normal before queueing up behind the safety car. This took rather a long time, however, and the interruption dragged on even longer as the lapped cars were allowed to re-take their positions.
Button led Vettel at the restart, both putting off their stints on super soft tyres until the final phase of the race. Then came the trio that had already used the green-striped tyres: Massa, Kubica and Raikkonen.
Piquet tried to pass Rosberg for sixth on the outside of turn one at the restart, but was caught out by his cold brakes and tyres, and spun into retirement. Team mate Fernando Alonso, meanwhile, took 12th place off Glock, who had also just been passed by Hamilton.
Massa made an early return to the pits on lap 31, having fuelled aggressively short at his first stop in a bid to get back to the front. After taking on enough fuel to reach the finish the Brazilian driver fell towards the back of the pack from where he struggled to mount a recovery.
On lap 45 Massa’s F60 slowed and his race was over. This was a double blow for Ferrari - two laps earlier Raikkonen had crashed into the barriers on the exit of turn 13. The constructors’ champions start their title defence with no points after one race.
Kubica’s pace late in the race suggested Ferrari’s gamble of starting on the super soft tyres might have paid off had they gone the distance. Vettel made his final pit stop on lap 45, and Button came in two laps later, losing vital time as the team had to switch between refuelling hoses.The leading pair were now both on the super soft tyres and Kubica, on mediums, was catching them rapidly.
The stage was set for a grandstand finish with the leading trio covered by just a few seconds. On lap 56 Kubica pounced on Vettel at turn three and the pair collided. Vettel was surprisingly apologetic afterwards for incident in which both drivers could have given each other a bit more space. Instead both lost their front wings, and crashed separately at turn five. Vettel tried to keep his three-wheeled car going, but eventually pulled up. He was handed a grid penalty for the next race at Malaysia for the crash, and a $50,000 fine for driving around the track on three wheels.
This remarkable turn of events robbed us of a nail-biting chase to the flag, and brought the final curtain down on the whole race. The safety car was sent out to recover the wreckage and there was no time to get the race running again.
Kubica and Vettel collide, Vettel handed penalty (Video)
Meanwhile, unseen by the TV cameras, Trulli went off the track, losing what was now third place to Hamilton. Trulli then re-passed Hamilton after the safety car had arrived on track, and was later handed a 25-second penalty by the stewards which demoted him from third to 12th.
Trulli’s form at Melbourne was quite atypical: out-qualified by his much heavier team mate, but in superb form on race day, he deserved much more from the weekend. He later claimed Hamilton had slowed and he had no choice but to pass the McLaren.
Hamilton inherited third place against all expectations, and was the highest-placed KERS-equipped finisher. Glock took fourth after deftly passing Alonso around the outside of turn four on lap 51, having practised the move on Buemi two laps earlier.
Rosberg was sixth, a disappointment after his qualifying form, having lost time at crucial moments with his pit stop problem, the clash with Piquet, and being passed by Massa on lap one.
Buemi took seventh place on his debut, an ominous sign for team mate Bourdais, who finished eighth. Adrian Sutil was ninth after a spirited battle with team mate Fisichella. The Italian was 11th behind Heidfeld and no doubt rued missing his pit box when he pitted during the first safety car period, losing a lot of time.
Webber was a suitably unlucky 13th after another miserable home race, and Vettel, Kubica and Raikkonen were all classified behind him despite having stopped.
But this was a Grand Prix with a feel-good result. For two long months it looked as though Honda’s feverish work on its RA109 would reap no reward. But, re-born as the Mercedes-powered BGP 001, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello scored an historic result that would have been totally unthinkable just a few weeks ago.
That said, their margin of victory was nothing like as great as the pre-race form suggested. The signs are very good that we could be in for a close, competitive and exciting championship. Roll on Malaysia next weekend!
Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello lead Brawn GP in historic debut 1-2
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March 31st, 2009 at 09:55am Under Racing
Almost lost amid the many story lines coming out of today’s Australian Grand Prix was Sebastien Buemi’s fine driver to eighth place. That became seventh after Jarno Trulli’s penalty.
Buemi, the only rookie in the field, began the weekend well by out-qualifying team mate Sebastien Bourdais.
He avoided the opening lap fracas, ran as high as fourth, and was never headed by Bourdais all race long. You can’t ask much more of a rookie on their debut than that.
He is the 69th driver to score a point on his debut, joining current drivers Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg, Timo Glock and Mark Webber.
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March 31st, 2009 at 09:55am Under Racing
Lewis Hamilton has been promoted to third place in the Australian Grand Prix after Jarno Trulli was handed a 25-second penalty by the stewards.
Trulli’s penalty, for overtaking Hamilton during the final safety car period, relegates him from third to 12th.
Hamilton had taken third place off Trulli when the Italian ran off the circuit. During the confusion following the deployment of the safety car after Vettel and Kubica’s collision, Trulli re-took third place from Hamilton.
I’m disappointed to see the stewards bring such a harsh penalty on Trulli. If he overtook Hamilton unfairly under the safety car, it’s entirely clear what the consequence of that misdemeanour was, and the punishment should be for him to be relegated to fourth behind Hamilton.
Giving him a 25-second penalty is especially unfair in this context as the race finished behind the safety car, and so it dropped Trulli many more places than it would have done had the races ended normally.
Toyota are apparently readying a protest. It is Trulli’s second penalty of the weekend, the first coming for Toyota’s rear wing infringement during qualifying. Despite starting in the pit lane he drove an excellent race to finish third on the road.
The full revised Australian Grand Prix standings are here: Australian Grand Prix result
Update: Added video of Hamilton passing Trulli,. courtesy of F1 Zone
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March 31st, 2009 at 09:55am Under Racing
Button and Barrichello finished 1-2 in the Australian Grand Prix
Brawn GP grabbed an historic one-two finish in the dying stages of the Australian Grand Prix.
It cemented an unbelievable transformation for the team that massively under-performed in 2007 and 2008, was sold by Honda over the winter, and rescued by a management buy-out just a few weeks before the season began.
Jenson Button lead most of the race despite pressure from Sebastian Vettel and Robert Kubica in the dying stages. But with three laps to go the Red Bull and BMW drivers controversially collided allowing Rubens Barrichello to complete Brawn’s joy by grabbing second.
The jubilant drivers stood on the podium with hardly any sponsors on their overalls, and hastily-applied Virgin decals on their cars.
An ecstatic Button claimed his second win, finally following up his maiden triumph in the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix.
It marked the first time a new team has won its first race since Jody Scheckter steered Wolf to victory in the 1977 Argentine Grand Prix.
Image (C) Bridgestone
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March 31st, 2009 at 09:55am Under Racing
Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel clashed in dramatic fashion in the dying stages of the Australian Grand Prix.
Kubica was catching Vettel and leader Jenson Button at the time and looked set to mount an improbable bid for victory - instead his race and Vettel’s ended in the barriers.
Kubica had a clear run at Vettel and tried to pass him around the outside of turn three. But the pair banged wheels, and both ripped off part of their front wings.
Both continued but both got no further than turn five. Vettel put his wheels on the grass on the way into the corner and clattered into the barriers. Kubica simply under-steered straight on and met the same end.
Then followed the bizarre sight of Vettel trying to drag his now three-wheeled Red Bull around the track. At first the other cars hesitated to pass him as the safety car had been deployed, but Vettel eventually gave up and pulled his wrecked RB5 to a halt.
The drama meant the race ended behind the safety car for the first time since the 1999 Canadian Grand Prix. Vettel and Kubica were classified 14th and 15th.
Update: Sebastian Vettel has been handed a ten place grid drop penalty for the Malaysian Grand Prix for the incident. To my mind, it looked like a standard racing accident and wouldn’t have apportioned blame on either side. But Vettel immediately apologised so he must have considered himself at fault.
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