Brawn Free: How Jenson Button Won The Australian Grand Prix

After his landmark victory for Brawn GP at the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, Jenson Button denied that it had been easy.

The British driver cited difficulties with the tyres, the track surface and the low sun in the sky, which meant his second career win was not all plain sailing.

Watching the race from outside the cockpit, however, it was difficult to agree with Button.

The Somerset-born racer drove superlatively all afternoon, leading every single lap and never really being even remotely challenged for the victory.

He even managed to look after his super-soft tyres at the very end of the Grand Prix, which many other drivers complained had been graining after as few as three laps.

After two years in the wilderness, Jenson Button is well and truly back amongst Formula One’s front-runners.

This victory came in a very different manner to his first, back in the Hungarian Grand Prix of 2006, where he took advantage of race leader Kimi Raikkonen making a bizarre error in crashing into a backmarker to close up on the leaders under the safety car, having started from an uncompetitive fourteenth on the grid.

Button then ran second until his chief rival, world champion Fernando Alonso, slid off the road due to a loose wheel nut, leaving the then Honda driver to collect the win.

Whether his Hungary triumph was down to luck or skill, or more likely a mixture of the two, is still debated with vigour among F1 fans, a debate that has been rendered somewhat less relevant by the events of this weekend.

Regardless of the nature of Button’s first win, his second was incontestably a master class in level-headed, sensible race driving.

Knowing he had a massively competitive car under him, Button pushed as hard as he needed to and no harder—a truly mature decision given the unknown reliability of the Brawn car.

Watching the Australian Grand Prix, one got the impression that Button could have gone much quicker had he needed to.

But the British driver had it all under control as early as the first lap, and from there was able to drive his own race.

Compare Button’s simple and consistent race with the wilder one experienced by his teammate Rubens Barrichello.

Starting second on the grid, alongside Button, the Brazilian’s car went into anti-stall mode as the lights went out, immediately allowing several cars to overtake him on the run down to the first corner.

The traditional Australian first-corner chaos then ensued, with Barrichello miraculously escaping with a largely undamaged car while the races of Heikki Kovalainen, Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld were all but ruined.

Webber was fuming with Barrichello after the race, though the Brazilian himself blamed Kovalainen for triggering the collisions.

Barrichello, F1’s most experienced driver, then got the opportunity to put one over his old team by overtaking Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

The Finn, unaccustomed to being overtaken after years in the fastest cars, gave Barrichello little room and the Brawn car left the scene of the incident with slight front wing damage.

The loss of downforce hurt the Brazilian’s lap times, and soon his teammate was out of sight in the lead.

After his first pit stop, in which the errant wing was changed, Barrichello matched Button—now way in front—for pace, but was too far behind his teammate to make a real impression.

Furthermore, he was somewhat hobbled by his team on strategy, who had fuelled him to the finish at the first stop and only brought him in again with seven laps to go, so that the Brazilian could make the mandatory change to the super-soft tyre.

From there he dropped from second to fourth, which became second again after Sebastian Vettel and Robert Kubica collided with three laps to go.

Thus Barrichello was able to join his teammate on the podium, but it was much more fortuitous a result than Button’s had been.

Where Button was driving smoothly and consistently, Barrichello was trying desperately to make up for his earlier blunders and appeared more “on the ragged edge,” less at ease with the car.

His job had been made a whole lot harder by the circumstances of the start, which Button had managed to execute perfectly while Barrichello struggled, but it was incontestable that the race was won by the more level-headed and consistent driver.

Whether this pattern will continue throughout the season remains to be seen, but Button will be much more confident going into Malaysia than his teammate.