BrawnGP

Oct 4, 2009

BrawnGP Salvaged 3 points

The points gained is not enough to win the Constructor Championship. We need to wait until Brazilian GP to put a finish to the Constructor Championship. But will the driver championship be decided there?

Barrichello edged 1 point over his rival Button with 7th and 8th position respectively. Vettel capitalized from the BrawnGP poor showing and closing the gap with 10 points race victory in Suzuka.

Mathematically, Vettel still in the hunt with current 69 points to Button 85 points. But the push is a little too late, Red Bull chance to become champion should be decided in Interlagos.

Barrichello 14 points gap may also prove to be too big to close as I'm sure by Brazilian GP,  the driver and constructor championship should be concluded.

In the race event at Suzuka, Jenson made a poor start, with Kovalainen jumped a position with his KERS power, but Jenson managed to get past them when Sutil and Kovalainen was collided into each other.

Jenson was in 8th position for much of the whole race. At certain point of time, he managed to leapfrogged Rosberg after 2 pit stops was concluded, but the accident that caused the safety car to be called upon played into Rosberg hand.

It was the right moment he made the last pit stop and it was a short one and when he came out from the pit stop, he maintained his 5th position. Because the other teams will need to slow down during the yellow flag. If he was pick-up before he made the pit stop, then BrawnGP would have surely sealed the constructor title.

Barrichello was not having any improvement in the race and in the end he got 7th position although he started 6th. Infact at the end of the race, Button was getting really aggressive  and was about to attack Barrichello. I'm sure there was messages from the pit asking to back off as we need to keep both cars and the points are more important than personal battle.

In the end, I feel the package was competitive but qualifying was not good enough. I need to question also why in Singapore and in Japan we left it late in qualifying? I hope we able to improve our qualifying in Brazil.

Oct 3, 2009

BrawnGP Penalized in Qualifying

This is harsh, both Barrichello and Button was penalized for not slowing down during the yellow flag. And thus demoted to 6th and 10th respectively.

We were paying the price for coming out late, as we deseprate to get a timed lap, in the end, we did not slow down when Buemi's car front wing fled out into the track where yellow flag was signaled.

I'm not sure if both realised about the yellow flag, but one thing for sure is they both have only one chance to get a timed lap.

This setback surely open up the championship as Button may not be getting any points while Barrichello and Vettel who are both further up the grid may close the gap further making the championship race even more interesting.

Oct 3, 2009

Incident Pack Qualifying at Suzuka

It sounds eerie, as I lost count of how many accidents during the qualifying. As much as 3 race stops (red flags) due to various accidents involved Alguersuari , Glock and Kovalainen.

Barrichello and Button both are qualified 5th and 7th position, with suspected heavy fuel, but the team let it really late to come out from the pit when accident occurred.

In Q2, there were only made 1 timed lap counted, and boy they left it late and we made it to Q3, however there was a moment of scare when Buemi car's front wing was on the race track when Barrichello and Button pass it.

In Q3, we left it late again when Kovalainen crashed the wall causing red flag again. And again we only made 1 timed lap and we finished 5th and 7th.

It is said the track is pretty 'green' after few years out from F1 and also due to the rain washout causing less rubber on the track and thus accidents prone to happen.

With this in mind, I believe BrawnGP will be playing it safe tomorrow as I'm sure we are seeing safety car more often than not for tomorrow race.

I suspect whoever who made the right pit stop at the right time when safety car is out will gain significant advantage. However, we need to see how much fuel was in the 2 BGP001 cars.

Oct 2, 2009

Wet Practice Session in Japan

Basically BrawnGP saving the tires for the qualifying and actual race in case the weekend is wet. Not much work had been done in practice session as BrawnGP abandoned the 2nd practice session.

The 1st practice session saw Button with minimum run and finish at lowly 18th and Barrichello at 9th position. Both practice sessions  was in wet condition.