Fun F1

Isn’t it amazing – Jenson Button has been unstoppable this season yet come his home Grand Prix and that dominance goes out the window. It’s the complete reverse of what I like to call the “Spanish motobike rider syndrome” – which is a phenomenon you see in MotoGP and other bike events where Spanish riders are much MUCH more competitive in their home Grand Prix than in other races (provided they keep the thing on the track ).

I had a feeling this would be one race that escaped Jenson… should have taken that bet

I think the point form works better so we’ll go back to that for this round:

• Sebastian Vettel – Wow.
• Mark Webber – Almost wow Great job getting ahead of Barrichello though! And good to see the Aussie media start to give some front page coverage to him (at least on the news web sites).
• Rubens Barrichello – Great that he managed to beat his teammate, but should have drove it home by taking the win.
• Felipe Massa – After Vettel I vote Felipe for drive of the race. He fought hard and got a great result.
• Nico Rosberg – Solid. Williams edging ahead of Toyota?
• Jenson Button – Hard to tell whether he could have done more. I really hope he doesn’t settle for playing a numbers game for the rest of the season
• Giancarlo Fisichella – What happened there? Wasn’t he ahead of Alonso and Hamilton at one point? Then he ends up 10th. I guess that’s still good for Force India though
• Kimi Raikkonen & Kazuki Nakajima – Didn’t quite catch where they dropped down the pack so much?
• McLaren, Renault, BMW – Oh dear…

Another race another Button win. That’s all I have to say…

Just kidding But really, Jenson Button’s dominance made this race rather boring. Thankfully Rubens Barrichello managed to balls up a few things again to prevent another Brawn 1-2. Not that I have anything against Brawn GP but we don’t want them to take the Championship too early do we Bernie?

It was good to see the Red Bull cars back on pace after a disasterous Monaco (for Vettel anyway).

McLaren and Ferrari are still lost at sea.

Nico Rosberg finally got some decent points instead of just showboating on Friday practice

Was great to see how KERS can keep a slower car (like a McLaren) in front of a car with a lot more overall pace.

I’ll put it out to the readers – can anyone stop Jenson Button now?? In any race let-alone for the Championship?

Well Jenson’s done it again. His record of wins this season is amazing. With the super soft tyres being a lot less durable in Moncao, Jenson’s smooth style put him in a league of his own.

Jenson Button – The guy is a bit boring to watch on track, but boy is he effective. It’s like watching Alain Prost all over again.

Rubens Barrichello – With a fantastic start there was so much promise at the start of the race. But again, he was absolutely no match for Button. Could it be the car is developed around Jenson’s style? Whatever the case, ADAPT Rubens!

Felipe Massa – Thank you for making the race exciting Felipe! At the start of last year if I had to get rid of a Ferrari driver it would have been Felipe, but now it’d be a very tough call between Felipe and Kimi.

Sebastian Vettel – What on earth happened here? This was supposed to be the race where he could finally topple those evil Brawn GP cars now that Red Bull has a double-decker diffuser. Biggest disappointment of the race!

Mark Webber – Vettel’s teammate however did a good job with what seems to be a bad car for the Monaco track. Let’s hope the Red Bull package is better on the high speed tracks.

Kimi Raikkonen – Fantastic weekend for Kimi. I know it sounds weird, but I think this guy has sooooo much personality Think about it…   And is it just me or does Kimi look a lot fitter?

BMW Sauber – Another team to massively disappoint with the new diffuser.

Nico Rosberg – Again fast in practice but didn’t really follow it up with a good results. Sure it was a better result than normal, but Williams have really been disappointing this year (disappointing is my favourite word this year )

Lewis Hamilton – Qualifying was a real shame. I would have liked to have seen him up the front giving the others a bit of argey bargey hehe

Fernando Alonso – Not much to say here really. Sorry to all the girls from the Raquel del Rosario pages

In most races this year I’ve bagged the performance of Rubens Barrichello in comparison to his teammate. However in Spain Rubens drove a fantastic race. I just can’t understand how he finished second. Up until Brawn changed Button from a 3 stop strategy to a 2 stop one, Rubens had the measure of Jenson. You really have to question why Brawn changed Jenson’s strategy…

Rubens Barrichello – Good qualifying (given he had a heavier car than his teammate) followed by a good race. The poor guy must be feeling like he’s at Ferrari all over again with his teammate suddenly winning when he seemed to hold all the cards.

Jenson Button – Even though the strategy change was probably the biggest factor in Jenson winning, he still had to put in fast laps to get ahead of Rubens so good job.

Mark Webber – Probably the best drive of the race if you ask me. Really nice to see some solid results (and reliability!) finally.

Sebastian Vettel – Backed Mark Webber up with another great result. Red Bull are certainly looking good for the season.

Fernando Alonso – The man just keeps collecting points. Could come in handy later in the season but unlikely he could challenge for the championship.

Ferrari – Just when you thought they were on top of things and looking fast again they go and balls it up with some BASIC errors that should never happen in F1. First with Kimi in qualifying and then not enough fuel for Felipe in the race – who does that??

First Lap Accident – Hard to tell who to blame for this one but Toro Rosso were certainly an unfortunate victim of events that neither driver started..

In Bahrain Brawn GP certainly did a good job in making our prediction that Brawn won’t be a championship contender seem very wrong I’ll still stick by the call that they won’t be the no.1 team to beat in the 2nd half of the season – but Jenson Button certainly does have a nice points buffer now which he can maintain for quite a long time yet.

Jenson Button – Great victory. Not sure what happened during qualifying but the Brawn GP cars still have the edge during “normal” dry race conditions.

Sebastian Vettel – I wonder if I should place a bet on this guy for the championship… although chances are if I did Red Bull Racing would start having their usual reliability problem   But we can’t say enough how much of a talent this guy is

Jarno Trulli – Wow, not much sign of the Trulli Train in this round. Great job following up a super qualifying with a good race!

Timo Glock – Leading the race early on. Finished 7th. What happened?

Lewis Hamilton – Thought he might be able to finish higher than he did, but a good job none-the-less.

Rubens Barrichello – Over 37 seconds behind his teammate? Hmm..

Kimi Raikkonen – Finally some points for Ferrari! Unfortunately they still looked slow..

Fernando Alonso – Probably the most unimpressive round this season. But hey, better than being where Nelson Piquet Jr is now right?

Toro Rosso – Amazing how they performed in the wet in the previous round then here, nothing.

BMW and Williams – Two most disappointing teams of 2009 so far? Both seemed like they could have been right up there leading up to the season… what a shame.