iSport | For the Fans, by the Fans

Never in my wildest of imaginations had I envisaged Jenson Button to lead a race let alone lead the championship with 4 convincing victories. A victim of substandard unreliable packages and shoddy team management, the talented Button languished in the bottom half of the formation. But miracles do happen. And we are witnessing one qualifier after qualifier, race after race and podium after podium.

At Spain, Button had the speed and the guile to snatch pole on Saturday and the pragmatism to control any bravado and challenge his team-mate going into the precarious Turn 1 in the race.

During the race as well, Button astutely conserved his tyres and fuel to pit on lap 18 much to Barrichello’s chagrin who was expecting Button to pit on lap 16 or 17. Button set a few fastest lap during the opening few laps with the sole intention of maintaining a whiffing distance. It seemed he never wanted to overtake Barrichello. While going into his first pit stop, he learned from his engineers that they were switching him on a 2 stopper with a heavier car to tackle. Button demonstrated absolute pace lap after lap persistently to snatch the win.

Now, theoretically speaking, a 3 stop strategy, a lighter car and the lesser time spent on the harder tyres would have landed Barrichello a victory. But he seemed to have goofed up big time at Barcelona. The post race assessment also proves that Barrichello’s race engineers time and again told him to increase his pace as Button had switched to Plan B. Barrichello’s pace was found lacking throughout the race and I am sure that during the pre-race briefing, the aspect of reversing strategies would have been adequately discussed.

Although, Heidfeld’s and Rosberg’s positions helped Button’s race engineers promptly modify his strategy, Barrichello was down by 0.6-0.7 seconds off after being overtaken and in the end finished 13 seconds behind Button.

Of course, conspiracy theorists have labeled Button’s victory a team order exercise and Barrichello did put up a sad act of a victimized driver again, reminiscent of the Schumi era, we all know for sure that he was beaten by sheer pace and brains.

Ross Brawn though was not the one to be fooled. He was quite candid in his post race interview mentioning, “3 stops was unquestionably the quicker strategy. All our calculations showed that. What's strange and disappointing is that Barrichello, on his second primes, was half-a-second to a second slower than what he could or should have been."

All in all, with the European rounds underway, some genuine excitement and gossip moments like those seen at Spain are definitely guaranteed. The only teaser is who will halt the Button juggernaut??

< Prev		Next >