Skip to main content

Button clinches Formula One title in Brazil

SAO PAULO: Jenson Button clinched his first Formula One title with a fifth-place finish at the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday and his Brawn GP team made history by becoming the first to take the constructors' crown in its debut season.

"This race was the best race I've driven in my life," Button said. "I knew I had to make it happen."

He was ecstatic at the finish, singing Queen's "We Are The Champions" over the team radio as he crossed the line.
Red Bull's Mark Webber claimed his second Grand Prix win ahead of Robert Kubica of BMW Sauber and defending champion Lewis Hamilton of McLaren.

Home-crowd favorite Rubens Barrichello — Button's Brawn GP teammate and his closest rival at the start of the race — started from the pole but finished eighth after a puncture. Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, who also had a shot at the title entering the race, was fourth.

Fifth was good enough to give Button an insurmountable 15-point lead over Vettel in the drivers' standings ahead of the season-ending race in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 1.

Button's triumph gives Britain back-to-back F1 titles for the first time since Graham Hill won in 1968 and Jackie Stewart in 1969. Hamilton won last year, also clinching at the Brazilian GP.

"I am the world champion. I'm going to keep saying it all night," the 29-year-old Button said. "I'm going to enjoy this moment like you wouldn't believe. I'm sitting here as the world champion and that's something you cannot take away."

In his 10th year in Formula One, Button had a historic start to the season by winning six of the first seven races, then was consistent enough the rest of the year to arrive in Brazil with a comfortable lead.

It was a memorable finish for the Brawn GP team, which came to Interlagos with a commanding lead in the constructors' standings, needing only half of a point to clinch the title.

"It hasn't sunk in yet, it hasn't sunk in yet," team principal Ross Brawn said. "It'll take a while."

The team was created only a few weeks before the start of the season using the infrastructure of the former Honda team after the Japanese carmaker decided to withdraw from the sport because of the global recession.

Button started 14th after a poor qualifying performance in heavy rain on Saturday, but he drove aggressively from the start to quickly move up the grid.

All three title contenders got away cleanly, but the safety car was brought out before the first lap was over after a crash between Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Force India's Adrian Sutil. Trulli immediately confronted Sutil after the incident and it looked for a moment as though the two drivers would come to blows. FIA decided it was a "racing accident" and fined the Toyota driver $10,000 for "aggressively confronting" Sutil on the track.

Button was up to ninth after the safety car left the track on the third lap, and then made bold passes to overtake the Renault of Romain Grosjean and the Williams of Kazuki Nakajima to move to seventh. He moved up to fifth following the last round of stops.

Vettel also had a good race after starting 15th, but it wasn't enough to keep his title hopes alive.

McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen had a disastrous pit stop when he drove off with his refueling hose still attached, spilling fuel along the pit lane. Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari then ignited the spilled fuel after he pitted to changed his front wing. A fireball briefly enveloped his car but he was able to continue. The incident prompted FIA to fine McLaren $50,000 and add 25 seconds to Kovalainen's elapsed race time.

Barrichello, starting from pole, led for the first part of the race but dropped out of contention after the first round of pit stops. He began the race with a lighter fuel load and the strategy proved costly. Nevertheless, he looked set for a podium finish until a puncture after touching wheels with Hamilton's McLaren forced him into another pit stop, frustrating the nearly 70,000 Brazilian fans who packed the Interlagos circuit.

"I tried my best to be able to win here in front of my fans," Barrichello said. "But unfortunately I didn't have the car to do it today. I just have to congratulate Button on his title. He deserved it."

Webber, who won for the first time at the German Grand Prix earlier this season, took the lead after the first round of stops and dominated from there on.

"Fantastic day for the team to win again," Webber said.

The victory secured second place for Red Bull in the constructors' championship.

Defending champion Hamilton finished third after starting from 18th on the grid.

"Today it's been an extremely tough day," Hamilton said. "To fight all the way up to third from 18th, it's a great job for the whole team."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...