Jenson Button (right) and Brawn GP Finally Stow Away the Formula 1 Drivers' and Constructors' Titles at Sao Paolo.
Mark Webber’s speedy chassis (14 Red Bull Renault) overcomes the Brawn GP entries for the overall victory at Brazil, yet Jenson Button (22 Brawn Mercedes) puts his car into the points to seal his first Formula 1 Drivers’ championship in his ten-year career. Button wins the crown largely upon Brawn’s early season form which provided the team with victories in six of the first seven stops on the circuit, yet his failure to snare any additional victories left him open to critcism for not having the ability to close out the deal. Button gets the last say in the matter, and provides Great Britain with consecutive world champions (Lewis Hamilton in 2008), a feat not accomplished since the fifties.
Brawn GP Veteran Rubens Barrichello Stays Alive in the Drivers' Championship With His Victory at Valencia.
Racing at the beautiful locale of Valencia, Spain, Lewis Hamilton (1) spurts forward for a precarious lead over hard charging Rubens Barrichello (23 Brawn Mercedes), yet the former’s horrific pit stop with only twenty laps remaining opens the door for Barrichello, who dashes away for a rewarding race victory.
Brawn GP Racer Jenson Button Stands as a Man Apart After Winning Six of Seven Outings on the F1 Circuit.
Formula 1 returns to Byzantium with its traveling roadshow and Jenson Button (22 Brawn Mercedes) remains the dominant headline after slipping past pole sitter Sebastian Vettel (15) on Lap 1 and races away from Red Bull antagonist Mark Webber (14) to snare his sixth circuit victory in seven starts, virtually ensuring him a role in the final act later in the season.
The FIA and the Team Manufacturers Go to War Over Revenue Sharing, Constructor Expenses, and the Heavy Hand of FIA supremo Max Mosley.
Bigger news looms on the horizon, however, as a nasty spat between FIA president Maxwell Mosley and several club principals threatens to tear Formula 1 apart at the seams. Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, BMW, and Red Bull, upset with Mosley’s mendacity and F1 supremo Bernard Ecclestone’s bountiful cut of franchise revenues, refuse to sign a new agreement with F1 unless all parties renegotiate a revenue sharing arrangement and the FIA defangs the patrician Mosley. Ecclestone and Mosley bristle at the attempt to clip their wings, and the teams make preliminary arrangements to establish a rival breakaway series. Both sides creep to the brink before Ecclestone drags Mosley off from his perch, and F1 survives the immediate crisis. Mosley and Ecclestone will still manage to slip in one more punch before the new deal takes effect.
Club Principal Ross Brawn Brings the Notion of Team Orders Over With Him From Ferrari, and No. 2 Driver Rubens Barrichello Pays The Price.
Brawn GP Number 2 Rubens Barrichello (23 Brawn Mercedes) outqualifies high profile teammate Jenson Button (22 Brawn Mercedes), beats all challengers off the line, and breaks away from the field en route to an insurmountable lead, yet the art of politics rears its uncomely head as club principal Ross Brawn muses over the implications of his situation. With the sudden emergence of Red Bull and young Teuton colt Sebastian Vettel, Brawn elects to reach for his dusty Ferrari playbook and in Machiavellian fashion orders P1 Barrichello to the pit lane in order let P2 teammate Button by for the orchestrated victory. Button gleefully cheers his fourth win in five outings in the Brawn chassis, yet Barrichello and the F1 observer community turns away from Barcelona with a headache and a bitter aftertaste upon the tongue.
Upstart fledgling Brawn GP Stuns the Racing World Order As Its Radical Rear Diffuser Stomps the Field at Melbourne.
In an F1 opener for the ages, British upstart Brawn GP, purportedly only a shoestring shell survivor of Honda’s failed grand prix efforts, shatters the existing order in top-shelf auto racing as reputed has-beens Jenson Button (22 Brawn Mercedes) and Rubens Barrichello utterly crush the field at Melbourne with a stunning wire-to-wire, one-two victory. The other constructors, hardly believing for a moment that mastermind Ross Brawn could build a such a dominant chassis for his debut entry into Formula 1, immediately uncover the team’s clever and clandestine work with Honda during the prior season in preparation for Melbourne. Still frustrated with Brawn’s sudden success, the constructors then allege that the winning entry ran with an unsanctioned diffuser design (the rear wing) that essentially works as a double wing. The constructors assert that since the rules restrict the planar dimensions of a diffuser expressly in order to limit the amount of downforce available to a driver, a team by definition then cannot implement any design that indeed adds downforce. Brawn counters that its lower plane is part of the diffuser’s required support structure and not an aerodynamic device. The FIA, with a wink and a smirk to the camera, summarily approves the diffuser design, and the other constructors groan at the thought of a long season in desperate pursuit of Brawn GP.
McLaren Driver Lewis Hamilton Buckles Under the Pressure Generated by his Actions in Allowing Jarno Trulli to Pass Him Under Caution at Melbourne.
If the Brawn diffuser did not cause enough controversy on its own, the literal race outcome enters the realm of the bizarre during the final moments. P5 and hard charging Jarno Trulli of Toyota, battling struggling P4 Lewis Hamilton of McLaren for position, powers past the latter and one more entry in order to earn a startling podium finish, an engaging surprise for ever-struggling Toyota and F1 enthusiasts. McLaren protests the result and alleges that Trulli passed Hamilton after Race Control issued a caution condition, a clear stewards’ violation. The stewards remove Trulli from the final classification, yet a swift protest by Toyota and a subsequent investigation reveals in stunning fashion a radio transmission from McLaren to Hamilton instructing him to allow Trulli to pass his car. Since all teams receive immediate notification of a caution condition, and the subject radio transmission clearly came after the same, the stewards angrily assert malfeasance on the part of McLaren, reinstate Trulli back to the podium, and disqualify McLaren from the contest. The controversy only takes on additional heat after a harried Hamilton desperately blames team race manager David Ryan for his actions. As the nuclear fallout descends upon McLaren, Ryan loses his job, the FIA quietly ushers high profile team principal Ronald Dennis out of race operations, and Hamilton faces a long season working with an angry team who believes its pampered driver sold out a much admired race director in order to save his public image. In Hamilton’s defense, did he have any choice after the stewards discovered the utterly foolish radio transmission?
