On paper the result in the Chinese Grand Prix was a good one for Brawn GP 3rd & 4th in a very wet race which could have easily ended in the barrier for any driver. Both drivers first and second in the drivers championship and the team leading the constructors championship but I would be lying if i said I wasn’t at least a little disappointed with the result.
Sebastien Vettel won the race and Mark Webber was second but they were faster than the Brawn GP cars today by some margin, true they were faster in qualifying too but they were on a light fuel load so it looked like Brawn GP would have the better race pace than the Red Bull cars. However the both JB and RB seemed to struggle in the wet conditions with them both complained of difficulty getting the tyres and breaks up to temperature. We obviously got a lot of rain in Malaysia and Jenson won there but he was so far ahead once the rain came and it was so torrential we didn’t realy get to gauge the pace of the cars in those conditions. Today however it showed that BGP001 is not at its best when running in the wet and despite Jenson threatening Webber for a short time it was inevitable that he would lose out in the end.
I did say I was a little disappointed but I am trying to look at the positives, the BGP001 is a car which had zero wet weather testing before the season and only a few laps in Malaysia so to come 3rd and 4th is pretty good damn good but after the highs of the first two races its just a little less that I had hoped for. I do however believe that we still have the best pace in the ideal dry and warm conditions and that is exactly what we are going to see in the next race in Bahrain so I am looking forward to a great result there.
Pos | No | Driver | Team | Laps | Time/Retired | Grid | Pts |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 15 | Sebastian Vettel | RBR-Renault | 56 | 1:57:43.485 | 1 | 10 |
2 | 14 | Mark Webber | RBR-Renault | 56 | +10.9 secs | 3 | 8 |
3 | 22 | Jenson Button | Brawn-Mercedes | 56 | +44.9 secs | 5 | 6 |
4 | 23 | Rubens Barrichello | Brawn-Mercedes | 56 | +63.7 secs | 4 | 5 |
5 | 2 | Heikki Kovalainen | McLaren-Mercedes | 56 | +65.1 secs | 12 | 4 |
6 | 1 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 56 | +71.8 secs | 9 | 3 |
7 | 10 | Timo Glock | Toyota | 56 | +74.4 secs | 19 | 2 |
8 | 12 | Sebastien Buemi | STR-Ferrari | 56 | +76.4 secs | 10 | 1 |
9 | 7 | Fernando Alonso | Renault | 56 | +84.3 secs | 2 | |
10 | 4 | Kimi Räikkönen | Ferrari | 56 | +91.7 secs | 8 | |
11 | 11 | Sebastien Bourdais | STR-Ferrari | 56 | +94.1 secs | 15 | |
12 | 6 | Nick Heidfeld | BMW Sauber | 56 | +95.8 secs | 11 | |
13 | 5 | Robert Kubica | BMW Sauber | 56 | + 106.8 secs | 17 | |
14 | 21 | Giancarlo Fisichella | Force India-Mercedes | 55 | +1 Lap | 20 | |
15 | 16 | Nico Rosberg | Williams-Toyota | 55 | +1 Lap | 7 | |
16 | 8 | Nelsinho Piquet | Renault | 53 | +2 Laps | 16 | |
17 | 20 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 50 | Accident | 18 | |
Ret | 17 | Kazuki Nakajima | Williams-Toyota | 43 | Transmission | 14 | |
Ret | 3 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 20 | Electrical | 13 | |
Ret | 9 | Jarno Trulli | Toyota | 18 | Accident damage | 6 |