Button becomes World Champion

After nearly ten years in Formula 1 British driver Jenson Button has become Formula 1 World Champion. The Briton secured the title with one race to spare at the Brazilian Grand Prix putting his final two title challengers, Rubens Barrichello and Sebastian Vettel out of the title hunt. The Brazilian Grand Prix was spectacular all weekend. In qualifying on Saturday torrential rain meant that the second part of qualifying had to be delayed for almost an hour due to too much standing water on the track resulting in it being unsafe to drive on. When it finally restarted Button got caught out on the wrong tires and only managed to qualify in 14th place, one place behind Vettel. Button was quoted as saying that he “had no rear grip” which led to him sliding down the lap chart. Barrichello went on to take pole for his home grand prix and in doing so making the prospect of the championship going to the final grand prix in Abu Dhabi all the more possible. Thankfully the rain had subsided come race day, but that didn’t mean the race was going to be any less dramatic! On lap 1 at the second corner Vettel and McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen tangled sending Kovalainen spinning, a few corners later Jarno Trulli collided with Adrian Sutil which resulted in Trulli spinning into the wall and Sutil spinning into double world champion Fernando Alonso. The three drivers were out. Trulli made his feelings clear about the incident to Sutil and confronted him which he later got a $10,000 fine for. In the pit lane Kovalainen brought a damaged car into the pits ahead of Kimi Raikkonen who had come in with a damaged front wing. As Kovalainen left he dragged the refuelling line with him and sprayed fuel all over Raikkonen’s Ferrari which dramatically caught fire for a few seconds, both cars were able to continue. By the end of the first lap Button had managed to go from 14th to 9th and at this point the safety car came out to allow the clean up of the first lap crash. After it came in on lap 6 Button set about charging through the field in pursuit of his teammate Barrichello and at the halfway point he was well inside the points in 5th place. From this point on the championship was looking like a real possibility as Barrichello had slipped down to third during the first round of pit stops. On lap 60 Buttons prayers were answered as Barrichello was forced to make an extra pit stop because of a puncture. At this point all Button had to do was bring the car home and the championship would be his. Mark Webber went on to win the second race of his career but the man of the hour was Jenson Button who became a world champion for the first time in his 9th season of F1. What was particularly poignant about it was after a few terrible years in Formula 1 many people said the Button had missed his chance to win a world title, even after winning his first race at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix a lot of pundits said it would still never happen. Button’s team Brawn GP win the Constructors Championship also in their first season in Formula1. After only securing financial backing a few months before the season started the team rose out of the ashes of the Honda team and stormed through the year with some impressive results finishing first and second in their first Grand Prix! A stressful year became clear when an emotional Ross Brawn (Team Owner) shed a few tears in a post race interview at the Brazilian Grand Prix. It’s looking increasingly more likely that Button will sign with Brawn GP again for 2010 so don’t count him out on another world championship!

The title fight continues to Brazil

Given Jenson Button's recent form it was always going to be difficult to rap up the title in Japan. With Barrichello not making it easy for him by any stretch of the imagination and Sebastian Vettel also looming in the background its not impossible to concieve that the title fight could go down to the last race in Abu Dhabi. Its been amazing to see how setting new regulations for the sport could have such a strange season. Button dominated the start of the season winning six out of the first seven races but since that last win in Turkey he's only graced the podium once (in Italy) Brawn have slipped down the pecking order slightly in the mid to late part of the season with Red Bull, McLaren and most notably Force India making a lot of improvement. The next race takes us to Brazil with Rubens Barrichello having home advantage which has got to count for something. Brawn look set to claim the constructers championship in their first season needing only half a point to be crowned champions. Sebastion Vettel will probably go into Brazil the most confident after a great win in Japan, he trails Button by only 16 points and who knows, he might end up pulling off a "Raikkonen"! Also he's only two points behind Barrichello so the fight for second is most definitly on!!

"Crashgate"

A week or two ago I went through my usual routine of checking the daily sports news and came across the "crashgate" story that is now infamous within the sport and more particularily, the F1 community. My first reaction was "The Piquets are feeling sore and are looking for a way to get back at the Renault team." Lets face it, Nelson Piquet junior hasnt had the most breathtaking Formula 1 career and it was a matter of "when" not "if" he was replaced at Renault so one would assume that he might try and find a way to get revenge. What I didnt expect was to wake up a week later to hear that Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds had left the Renault team in a way that seemed to imply that they were confessing to race-fixing. What next??!! Formula 1 has been through too much controversy over the last few years. From incidents involving the "spygate", the safety car incident with Hamilton and McLaren in Melbourne at the start of the race and now this!! The real shame is is that it is clouding over what is turning out to be a very good championship battle between the two Brawn drivers. The other thing worth mentioning is it really says alot about Briatore that he was willing to risk the life of his driver, other drivers and the track marshals just to win a race. Piquet has been openly critical of Briatore's management well before this incident so maybe there could be many other things behind the scenes that we don't even know about. Whatever the case Formula 1 has to take a good hard look at itself now and try to pick up the pieces and recover. The hearing is on Monday so hopefully after that the sport can put the incident behind them and get on with the racing!!