Sunday, May 10, 2009

2009 Spanish GP: Button and Brawn all set for the Championship

Jenson Button and Brawn GP showed that they are no flash in the pane and they pulled off an amazing race with brilliant strategy to continue their lead in both the driver’s and constructor’ world championship. Brawn had a perfect weekend with Button and Barrichello coming in one-two and now the team is all set to run away with the championship unless Red Bull and Vettel pull something special.

Brawn engineers also made a brilliant strategic shift of converting Button from a 3 stop to a 2 stop strategy and this was the turning point of the race for Button as he managed to win while Barrichello who was leading the first half of the race had to take 3 stops and this cost him the race and more importantly he once again may have to play 2nd fiddle to a driver going for the championship.

Mark Webber probably the most under rated driver on the grid managed to finish 3rd thanks to a very clever strategy by the RBR team while his teammate and championship contender Vettel finished 4th despite starting the race from the 2nd place on the grid. Vettel like Bahrain once again was just unlucky and had he got ahead of Massa in the first corner well he could have given the Brawn guys a run for their money.

Alonso despite limited support from the car once again showed why he is the best driver on track pulled off an inspiring 5th place in his home race and also thanks to Ferrari’s strategy error, Massa just enough managed to finish the line and lost 2 places due to it. Potentially this race was supposed to be the revival for the team but now I think the team should just forget the current season and work on the car for the next season and Brawn is way too ahead to catch up and if they finish in the top 3 it would be a great achievement for the team.

Nick Heidfeld and Nico Rosberg got the final points while BMW should be happy to score points after a disastrous Bahrain GP but they still have lots of work to do and in a way they managed to get these points thanks to a huge crash at the first corner which took out Trulli, Sutil and both the Toro Rosso cars. Williams continue to disappoint after a good Friday practice once again and well Rosberg may already be negotiating with various teams regarding drive for 2010.

The big 4 has a lot of work to do if they have to catch up with the likes of Brawn and Red Bull. Toyota had its worst race of the season but then they can bounce back quickly but among the big 4 only Ferrari has shown drastic improvement while McLaren, BMW and Renault continue to languish in the mid-field.

The next race is Monaco and it will be very interesting to see how the likes of Brawn and RBR handle on the street circuit but so far Brawn has cleared every test this season and well if luck can help Vettel, expect him to pull off a victory in Monte Carlo.

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