SOMEONE PINCH JENSON - BRAWN CLEAN UP WITH LEWIS NOT FAR AWAY
So here we go, it's time for another season. The Australian Grand Prix has been a regular fixture on the F1 calender since the mid 80s, and it's been held at Albert Park, Melbourne since the mid 90s, usually as the season opener. It has never though, been attempted in dusk conditions. Bernie thought this would be a good idea to make the race more accsessable to European fans. The Aussies had every right to tell him to take a long walk off a short cliff. Either way, here we were, and to top it off, rivals were nervous about three teams(including Brawn)'s rear diffusers. Well that prtest got waved off so we were going racing in what was potentially the most unpredictable season for a while.
Well in qualifying things were certainly interesting. Both Brits survived Q1 easilly enough(Piquet was the biggest name to go out early). Q2 was when Lewis ran into trouble though, the McLaren gearbox acting up, leaving him first having to start from P15, then booted back to P20 after an engine change, then booted back up to P18 after the Toyotas were forced to the pitlane for having illegal wings. That left Jenson as our main man in Q3 and he was looking to be the man to beat...with Barrichello only beating him late on! Jenson replied in the last seconds though to take his first pole since Oz '06, Barrichello backed him up for P2, making it an all-Brawn front row at the first time of asking, something they were unable to pull off in their Honda or BAR incarnations.
Well Lewis was always going to have a rough time of things starting from the back but it didn't seem to bother him. He was up in the top ten almost immediately and in the points not long afterwards. Of course his long pit stop meant that he was going to fall back afterwards but despite having an apparantly useless car, he was soon back mixing it in the points while other big names(hello Ferrari) faded away. Finally he made it up to 3rd by the time a safety car came out that effectively ended the race...and yet took the chequered flag 4th, missing the podium ceremony. He still should have been there though, Trulli was later given a 25 second penalty for over taking Lewis behind the safety car, and that gave the Brit 3rd, with his car not expecting to win till Spain and that's a couple of months away!
And yet, the spotlight was off Lewis this time around. Because Jenson blasted away from the field and was soon building up an unassailable lead. By unassailable I mean, despite two safety cars, no one could get past him, they just couldn't get close enough. Scratch that, two guys, Vettel and Kubica did get close, once, late on with Jenson forced to switch to dodgy "super soft" tyres. And then Vettel and Kubica promptly took themselves off! Leaving Jenson to cruise to his first win since Hungary '06, and Barrichello backed him up in 2nd for a Brawn 1-2 at the first time of asking, again something not achieved since the team's Tyrell-era, and the last Tyrell 1-2 saw Jody Scheckter lead home Patrick Depalier in the 1976 Swedish Grand Prix!
So, we now have Jenson Button, world championship leader. The Brawn man has 10 points. Lewis isn't far behind him though, opening his title defence in 3rd place with 6 points, certainly on course to do better than Damon Hill in '97 who took seven attempts to even finish a race that year.
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