Jenson Button and Brawn Win Malaysian Grand Prix
Jenson Button and Brawn GP continued their magical start to the season with a win in the Malaysian Grand Prix. The race had its exciting moments, but was mostly a mockery.
April 14th is shaping up as an incredibly important day in the 2009 Formula One season. Why? That’s the day the FIA will rule on the diffuser issue. It is also the day when we find out if Brawn GP will win both championships without a fight. As seen in Malaysia, they are simply the class of the field.
The Malaysian Grand Prix presented Brawn with two major downsides. The car had never run in the rain and Jenson Button gagged the start. Despite a monstrous downpour and the terrible start, Button moved back to the front and was leading by 25 seconds when the rain finally came and the race was eventually abandoned. That makes two safety car wins for Brawn and Button, although obviously no fault of their own. With Rubens Barrichello coming in fourth, the team is moving well ahead in the constructors’ championship.
Toyota and Red Bull continue to impress as well. Toyota scored another podium as Timo Glock used the intermediate tire choice to drive through the field. Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel were both very impressive although points were minimal after Vettel surfed off the track in the monsoon and Webber staggered into the back of the points.
How the might have fallen. The weekend started off with McLaren and Hamilton being caught red handed in a complete lie. A team member was held up as the sacrificial lamb and off the team went racing. Hamilton took the dog MP-24 and staggered into 7th position. Heikki Kovalainen spun on the opening lap and still has not completed a single lap after two races. As bad as the weekend was for McLaren, it was worse for Ferrari!
McLaren was pitiful, but not as pitiful as Ferrari. The team is simply a disaster. The inability to get Massa out of the first qualifying session was simply horrific. The race was worse. The team put Raikkonen on FULL WETS when the track was still dry. He was driving around a full 30 seconds slower than the leaders until it finally rained. By then, the tires were destroyed and so was the race. Massa dutifully tried to come forward and finished a respectable ninth, but his yelling into the microphone at his engineer tells you everything you need to know about the status of Ferrari. It’s getting ugly.
Worst of the Weekend
The Worst of the Weekend award, however, does not go to a car or a driver. It goes to Bernie Ecclestone. He pushed for the twilight start time despite knowing about the afternoon rain storms. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the race was abandoned a little more than half way through. Bernie deserves a lot of credit for the success of F1, but he is solely and completely responsible for this mockery of a race.
Best of the Weekend
Jenson Button gets my best of the weekend award. He gagged at the start, but showed composure and patience in slowly reeling the race leaders back in. His brilliant in lap on his first pit stop included putting a staggering seven tenths of a second on his teammate in one lap. I never thought I would say this, but Jenson Button looks every inch the quality driver and the season is setting up very nicely for him. Should he keep his level of performance up, the driver’s championship is over.
The boys head off to China in two weeks for the next round of racing. We will know what the FIA plans to do about the diffuser dispute by then, so the competitiveness of the field could and should be very different.
Lemmy