Barrichello Takes the Championship Fight to Button

Photo by S G Mendez

Rubens Barrichello has taken the 2009 F1 Championship fight to Jenson Button by landing pole position for tomorrow's Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos.

Button meanwhile made a hash of qualifying by failing to change to the intermediate tyre at the right point and remaining on full wets. He qualified fourteenth.

The third Championship protaganist Sebastian Vettel fell at the first hurdle by failing to progress from Q1 in a heavily rain affected qualifying "hour" which, due to various red flags, dragged on for nearly three hours. He starts fifteenth on the gird - directly behind Button.

Unfortunately the delayed coverage meant that those of us watching on the BBC had to endure Jake (the Plank) Humphrey asking numerous mind numbingly inane questions to pad out the time waiting for the qualifying sessions to restart.

At least today he managed to refrain from incessantly referring to David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan as DC and EJ - one of my pet hates - aaaarggghhh

It's almost enough for me to want the BBC to start showing adverts!

Putting my latest BBC F1 commentary rant to one side, it now appears that the Championship is a straight two horse race between Button and Barrichello - barring any miracle from Vettel tomorrow.

I still believe that Button will take the Championship but not until Abu Dhabi and with a whimper rather than a bang.

Call me unpatriotic but I'm afraid I do not class Button as a driver in the same league as the likes of Lewis Hamilton or Kimi Raikkonen.

The Championship was virtually gifted to him by dint of the fact the Brawn car in the first half of the season, due to their clever interpretation of the rules, was streets ahead of the opposition.

At the same time any misfortunes to the Brawn Team seemed to fall in the lap of Rubens Barrichello.

In the second half of the season the other teams have improved their cars, in particular Red Bull and McLaren and since that point Button has not had the sniff of a victory and has played safe.

If he remains with Brawn next year, as is expected, and their car is on a parr with the McLarens, Ferraris etc it will be interesting to see how he fairs on a level playing field - if I would hazard a guess, not too well.

The race tomorrow holds a lot of promise and could be a classic (maybe too much to hope!).

It will be great to see Vettel going for it from the back - after all he has nothing to lose. Button will need to try and keep himself out of trouble and avoid a DNF.

At the front Barrichello and Webber (P2) will both be desparate to win. Barrichello to keep his Championship hopes alive and Webber to prove to his doubters that he can get the job done.

Others to look out for in my opinion are Sutil who took an impressive P3 for Force India and Kimi Raikkonen in P5.

If it rains again during the race Sutil is definitely in with a shout for a podium finish.

Other posts you may like....

Button Wins at Spanish GP Barrichello Spits the Dummy!

Jenson Button Makes it Five Wins Out of Six

Button Wins again in Turkey. Is the Season Over?

German Grand Prix - Mark Webber Takes First F1 Career Pole

Aussie Mark Webber took his first F1 career pole position at a rain affected qualifying session at the Nurburgring yesterday afternoon with a blistering lap in difficult conditions.

It transpires that this pole position was fully merited as his car is fueled heavier than his nearest rivals on the grid.

Rubens Barrichello made a good tactical choice of tyre and was able to take second slot on the grid behind Webber but in front of his team mate and Championship leader Jenson Button in third.

At the press conference, Webber (obviously) and Barrichello seemed very pleased with their performance whilst Button's body language told a different story. It doesn't look like he will have an easy ride during the race today.

The Red Bulls appear to have the edge over the Brawns this weekend. On top of that, with more changeable weather forecast for the race, Barrichello and Vettel are ones to watch out for.

Talking of Vettel, he qualified fourth to the disappointment of the German crowd, but when fuel load is taken into account he would have been only 0.25 seconds behind Webber in P2.

The McLaren team appear to have pulled out all the stops to make some major improvements to their performance this weekend. New aero parts have been fitted to Lewis Hamilton's car giving around 0.7 seconds per lap improvement.

Hamilton qualified fifth and could be on for a podium finish especially if the weather comes into play. Heikki Kovalainen qualified sixth despite the new parts only being fitted to Hamilton's car but will probably drop back during the race.

The other star of qualifying (apart from Mark Webber) was Adrian Sutil who guided his Force India into P7. The highest ever qualifying slot for the team. Again the position was fully merited when fuel adjusted. Could Force India be on for their first points of the season?

The two Ferraris of Massa and Rakkonen qualified eighth and ninth respectively whilst Nelson Piquet rounded out the top ten outqualifying his team mate Alonso.

Hopefully Webber and Barrichello can both outscore their respective team mates this weekend to add some well needed spice to this season's Championship.

All will be revealed later today.

Mosley Tells FOTA Teams to Form Their Own Championship

The Formula 1 2010 budget cap row continues to rumble on before this weekend's Turkish Grand Prix.

As reported previously in this blog nine of the ten FOTA member teams submitted conditional applications for the 2010 FIA Formula 1 World Championship by the 29th May deadline.

Williams broke ranks from the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) and submitted a full entry to the Championship in line with their commercial and contractural obligations. They were later suspended from membership of FOTA.

Subsequently, Force India have also submitted a full entry and face suspension, like Williams, from FOTA.

Following the announcement of the proposed budget cap from 2010 onwards, many new entrants have been persuaded to submit entry applications and as the total number of teams that can enter is limited to thirteen (26 cars), places on the grid are not guaranteed for all of the current established F1 participants.

Perhaps emboldened by the level of new applicants to the sport, Mosley has effectively told the eight FOTA teams lead by Ferrari that have submitted only conditional entries for 2010 to put up or shut up.

Mosley has stated that if they are not happy with the rules set by the FIA they should consider running their own Championship and then they are free to do what they like.

This is certainly a high stakes game for all concerned.

Should the likes of Ferrari and McLaren do as is suggested by Mosley and go their own way Ecclestone will find himself in hot water with the television networks and advertisers.

On the other hand, some of the FOTA teams could find themselves in court for breach of contract. It is said that Ferrari could be sued for as much as £ 500 million.

The FOTA teams would also have enormous expenditure to get a breakaway series up and running.

Ecclestone has exclusivity arrangements with all the circuits currently used by F1 and numerous major television deals. The FOTA teams would have to negotiate venues and television coverage from scratch.

Some of the teams (Toyota ? Renault ?) may use these shenanigans as a convenient excuse to bow out completely in view of the losses they are currently incurring in their production car business.

Hopefully everyone will see sense at some point before too much irreversible damage is done.