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Unstoppable Button wins again in Monaco

May 24th, 2009 No comments

Rosberg passes Massa, Monaco, 2009Jenson Button has joined the ranks of Jackie Stewart, Nigel Mansell and Michael Schumacher by winning five out of the first six Grands Prix of the season when he drove to a flawless victory in Monaco on Sunday.

Even KERS couldn’t help Kimi Raikkonen to match the pace of the Brawn GP cars off the start and he dropped back to third behind Rubens Barrichello.

Ferrari must be encouraged by Kimi Raikkonen’s third place finish and Felipe Massa’s fourth, considering their woeful start to the season.  It gives them a nice haul of points and puts them fourth in the Constructors Championship.

Raikkonen might be happy for the team but he was disappointed not to finish higher:

Of course in the bigger picture I’m not happy with third place – I’m disappointed.  But, in this situation, for the team it’s a good result.

Despite the gains made by Ferrari the Brawn GP car just looks unstoppable now.  There doesn’t seem to be a circuit it is not suited to and Jenson Button’s driving is impressing even Ross Brawn:

I’m lost for words with him really. He’s exceeding everything I thought possible.

Button’s lead in the Drivers’ Championship is now 16 points over team mate Rubens Barrichello and 28 over Sebastian Vettel in third place.  Brawn GP lead the Constructor’s Championship by a massive 43.5 points, with more than twice as many points as Red Bull has in second place.

2009 Monaco Grand Prix Race Results

Pos Driver Team Grid Time Points
1 Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes 1 1:40:44.282 10
2 Rubens Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes 3 1:40:51.948 8
3 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 2 1:40:57.724 6
4 Felipe Massa Ferrari 5 1:40:59.392 5
5 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 8 1:41:00.012 4
6 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 6 1:41:17.868 3
7 Fernando Alonso Renault 9 1:41:22.121 2
8 Sebastien Bourdais Toro Rosso-Ferrari 14 1:41:47.424 1
9 Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Mercedes 13 1:41:49.322 0
10 Timo Glock Toyota 19 lapped 0
11 Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 16 lapped 0
12 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 20 lapped 0
13 Jarno Trulli Toyota 18 lapped 0
14 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 15 lapped 0
RET Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 10 crash, 76 laps 0
RET Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 7 crash, 51 laps 0
RET Robert Kubica BMW 17 retired, 28 laps 0
RET Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 4 crash, 15 laps 0
RET Nelson Piquet Jr Renault 12 retired, 10 laps 0
RET Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 11 crash, 10 laps 0

Image: David Keen

Categories: 2009 Season Tags: ,

Monaco: Fuel adjusted qualifying times

May 23rd, 2009 No comments

Jenson Button, Monaco, 2009While today’s qualifying session for the Monaco Grand Prix was a disappointment for Lewis Hamilton, who hit the barriers in Q1, it was pole number four for fellow Brit Jenson Button.

Below is a graph showing the actual top ten qualifying times as well as those times adjusted for the weight of fuel each car is carrying.  The graph assumes a standard lap time cost of 0.3 seconds per 10kg of fuel.

While the order looks roughly correct, it does seem like Sebastian Vettel is a little out of position.  He has the lightest car on the grid and his adjusted time is slower than his team mate Mark Webber’s who is a couple of rows behind him in eighth.

The graph does show how good Kimi Raikkonen was, though.  He was the only driver to really match the pace of the Brawns and it wasn’t because he was running light.  With his KERS equipped Ferrari on the front row, he will be a definite threat to Jenson Button’s race on Sunday.

2009 Monaco GP Q3 (weight-adjusted)

Image: Brawn GP

Categories: 2009 Season Tags: , ,

Barcelona lap time comparison

May 15th, 2009 3 comments

Robert Kubica, Spain, 2009Back in March, Oliver White at BlogF1 posted an interesting comparison of pre-season testing times from 2008 versus those of 2009.

In those numbers was a hint of the dominance to come from Brawn GP and the relatively poor performance of McLaren’s MP4-24.  But they were also a bit misleading in that the second best improved team was BMW followed by Ferrari, neither of which have impressed much this year.  Red Bull, currently second in the Constructors’ Championship, did only marginally better in the comparison table.

Last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix marked the start of the European F1 season which is traditionally the time when teams introduce upgrades to their cars.  In fact, in previous years, many teams would only release their new car when they got to Europe, choosing to run the previous season’s car for the opening flyaway races.

So with most of the teams bringing updated cars to Spain there was a lot of talk of improvements in lap times.  BMW’s upgrade was the most radical, attaching a new rear wing, front wing and a completely redesigned nose.  BMW team boss, Mario Theissen, said they were hoping for a half second per lap improvement.

But are the cars significantly faster now than they were at the beginning of the year?  As the teams all tested at the Circuit de Catalunya in the winter we can compare their times set in testing with their times set during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend.

Below is a table comparing the fastest time set by each team at the Barcelona test in February to their fastest time set during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend.

Team Driver (Test) Best Time (Test) Driver (GP) Best Time (GP) Difference
Williams Rosberg 01:19.744 Rosberg 01:21.588 +00:01.844
Brawn Barrichello 01:18.926 Button 01:20.527 +00:01.601
Toyota Glock 01:20.091 Glock 01:21.247 +00:01.156
BMW Kubica 01:20.214 Kubica 01:21.239 +00:01.025
Renault Alonso 01:20.664 Alonso 01:21.392 +00:00.728
Force India Fisichella 01:21.045 Sutil 01:21.742 +00:00.697
Ferrari Massa 01:20.168 Massa 01:20.553 +00:00.385
Red Bull Vettel 01:20.576 Vettel 01:20.660 +00:00.084
Toro Rosso Buemi 01:21.013 Buemi 01:21.067 +00:00.054
McLaren Hamilton 01:20.869 Hamilton 01:20.805 -00:00.064

Barcelona lap time comparison, 2009

To be honest, I’m a bit confused by the results.  It shows that all the teams except McLaren posted slower lap times at the Spanish Grand Prix than they did in testing.  In fact Brawn GP were the second biggest losers in the comparison despite dominating the race last weekend.

Perhaps this kind of comparison is not really valid but if BMW claim their car is now half a second a lap faster shouldn’t they have been able to at least match the time they set in testing?

If anyone has any ideas about how to interpret these results, I’d love to hear it in the comments.

Image: BMW AG

Categories: 2009 Season Tags: , , ,

Brawn GP domination continues in Spain

May 10th, 2009 No comments

Mark Webber, Spain, 2009In an unusually eventful Spanish Grand Prix, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello continued the domination of Brawn GP with another 1-2 finish.

Despite starting from the second row of the grid, Barrichello had a great start and passed both Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button to take the lead into the first corner.  Meanwhile, Nico Rosberg squeezed Jarno Trulli off the track causing the Italian to lose control and plough into the Force India of Adrian Sutil.  As carbon fibre scattered across the track, the two Toro Rossos had a coming together and by the end of the first lap the safety-car was out and all four drivers had retired.

When the safety-car came in, Fernando Alonso performed a spectular KERS-powered overtaking move on Mark Webber, only for the Australian to take the place back with an equally spectacular lunge up the inside.  Webber went on to finish third, ahead of team mate Sebastien Vettel who for most of the race couldn’t get past the KERS-powered Ferrari of Felipe Massa.

Vettel:

I was stuck behind him [Massa] for almost all of the race.  He was impossible to pass, he did a very good job with no mistakes.  It’s obviously disappointing as my car was quick today, but I couldn’t finish on the podium.

Massa eventually slipped back to 6th after a refuelling problem left him with one lap less fuel than he needed to finish the race, forcing him to slow down to conserve fuel:

We had a problem with the [refuelling] machine.  But I don’t know if the problem was human or the machine.  We need to analyse what was the problem.

It was very frustrating. You fight the whole race and then you have to back off.  I was already saving fuel in the last run, but it was not enough, so I had to really back off and let Vettel go.  I lost a position to Fernando and almost to Nick, so it was quite frustrating.

Jenson Button has now won four out of five Grands Prix and both Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa seem to have written off challenging for the Championship this year.  Massa said:

We need to be realistic. After five races they won four. Even if we improve massively and we are three or four tenths in front of them they will still score points. So forget it.

Hamilton was clearly not happy with his car, telling the BBC after the race:

It’s just a shame they haven’t given me a car to defend the championship with.  The car is that bad.  I’m driving the socks off it.  There’s just no hope.

2009 Spanish Grand Prix Race Results

Pos Driver Team Grid Time Points
1 Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes 1 1:37:19.202 10
2 Rubens Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes 3 1:37:32.258 8
3 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 5 1:37:33.126 6
4 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 2 1:37:38.143 5
5 Fernando Alonso Renault 7 1:38:02.368 4
6 Felipe Massa Ferrari 4 1:38:10.029 3
7 Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 13 1:38:11.514 2
8 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 7 1:38:24.413 1
9 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 14 lapped 0
10 Timo Glock Toyota 6 lapped 0
11 Robert Kubica BMW 10 lapped 0
12 Nelson Piquet Jr Renault 12 lapped 0
13 Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 11 lapped 0
14 Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Mercedes 20 lapped 0
RET Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 16 retired, 17 laps 0
RET Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 18 retired, 7 laps 0
17 Jarno Trulli Toyota 7 crash, 0 laps 0
18 Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 15 crash, 0 laps 0
19 Sebastien Bourdais Toro Rosso-Ferrari 17 crash, 0 laps 0
RET Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 19 crash, 0 laps 0

Image: Getty

Categories: 2009 Season Tags: ,

Spain: Fuel adjusted qualifying times

May 9th, 2009 No comments

Sebastian Vettel, Spain, 2009The proposed 2010 F1 Sporting Regulations will ban refuelling during the race.  This means that next year we will see a return to ‘proper’ qualifying where all cars run as light as possible to go as fast as possible.

As it stands now, those cars that make it through to the final qualifying session must use the fuel they qualified with while the rest of the field may refuel before the race.

In previous years this meant you could never be sure if a fast qualifying time was genuine or whether they were showboating with a light fuel load.  However, since the FIA started publishing the car weights after qualifying we can determine the relative performance of the top ten grid slots.

Below is a graph showing the actual top ten qualifying times as well as those times adjusted for the weight of fuel each car is carrying.  The graph assumes a standard lap time cost of 0.3 seconds per 10kg of fuel.

The graph shows that while Jenson Button is quick, Vettel was even quicker and Massa’s adjusted time is almost identical to Barrichello’s.

It’s going to be a battle between the Brazillians on the second row into the first corner!

2009 Spanish GP Q3 (weight-adjusted)

2009 Spanish Grand Prix car weights

Image: Getty

Categories: 2009 Season Tags: , ,