| Just to finish the race deserved an award in itself, given the incident filled race that F1GP Brazil 09 actually was! However, Brawn GP’s Jenson Button (5th Place) and Red Bull’s Mark Webber (1st Place) did more than that, taking out the crowns for World Champion and the Sunday Grand Prix Race respectively! Button was a strong contender for the all-out World Championship title as he has been in lead for a good portion of the season. In fact, since team saviour Richard Branson put his Virgin logo on the defunct Honda car and his Pound Sterling in their pockets allowing BrawnGP to race at the Australian Grand Prix earlier this year, Button has never looked back nor failed to make his sponsor and team proud! He may be the undisputed World’s open Wheeler F1 Champion, but his singing voice won’t get him a gig in the top 100 Idols of any country! He crossed the line to the tune of Rock band Queen’s classic “We are the champions”, off key and out of time, but that didn’t matter to the champ nor the team whose jubilation was impossible to contain!“It’s really amazing especially after the last few weeks.” He told the BBC, “It was such an awesome race – I’m world champion baby!” He went on to say that when he jumped into a car 21 years ago, he never expected to be world Champion … ” But we did it today!” He exclaimed! Team Boss Ross Brawn was more restrained and corporate as he recognised and paid tribute to the staff that were no longer part of this new organisation but who had worked hard under the old structure. “The work over the winter was sensational and I give all my thanks to all the people who couldn’t be with us and who had to leave”, he said. Button’s great success came in his 169th Grand Prix and at the end of his ninth season in Formula One, a year when he won six of the opening seven races and then struggled to recapture that form. Aussie Webber also celebrated as he crossed the line in pole position ahead of longtime rival Robert Kubica in his BMW Sauber and Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren Mercedes in third. Of course, Hamilton is the outgoing Drivers’ Champion who although started favorite and very strong this season, had some troubles early on that he was unable to recover from. Webber was strong in this race and although he had the advantage of a front grid position start, he did lead from the early stages and cruised comfortably over the line to bring home just his second win of his career! The points accumulated here gave Webber a fourth-place finish in the overall Drivers’ Championship. Not bad considering the countless luckless races he’d run over the years and his German Sebastian Vettel, in the second Red Bull, came in fourth, just ahead of Button with Finn Kimi Raikkonen sixth for Ferrari. Swiss Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso was seventh and Brazilian veteran Rubens Barrichello, in the second BrawnGP car, eighth after starting from pole position due to a tyre puncture towards the end of the race. The Race was filled with incidents that began from Lap 1 when Jarno Trulli’s Toyota crashed into Adrian Sutil, who later bumped ex-Champ Alonso out of the race. In true Italian fashion though, Alonso gave Sutil a heated spray which had nothing to do with the heat felt by Kimi Raikkonen after Heikki Kovalainen left the pits with the fuel hose still attached to his McLaren! All in all, a successful end that most would say was well deserved. Button had enough points to win the championship, so for him Abu Dhabi may be a little like a `Working Holiday’ ! ________________ 2009 FIA Formula
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