Buzzin Motor Sport

A fantastic first weekend in the F1 calendar saw Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello end up taking a one, two for debutant’s Brawn GP in Australia, but the race was robbed of an exciting grandstand finish,  say the BMW Sauber team in motorsports latest news.

As things happened Button crossed the finishing line ahead of Barrichello, under the safety car which had been called upon following the coming together of BMW’s Robert Kubica and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, with three laps remaining. Vettel was unable to keep control of his car as Kubica took the racing line, resulting in both cars losing part of their front wings. While both drivers continued it was only seconds before both  lost control of their cars, Kubica’s car written off and Vettel’s car badly damaged but driveable-albeit on three wheels.

Vettel was deemed to be in the wrong and received a ten place demotion on the starting grid for next weeks race in Malaysia, his Red Bull team were also fined $50,000 for telling their driver to stay out despite the damage to the car, when they should have advised him to retire.

The accident happened as Kubica and BMW’s strategy of using the hard compound tyre for the last stint of the race was starting to pay off for the Polish driver. Vetttel and Button were struggling to keep pace on the softer tyres which were rapidly fading and Kubica suddenly had the fastest car on the track.

Both Kubica and his team believe that he could have caught Button in the three remaining laps with the Pole claiming “I had a chance to win this race, I think  Sebastian (Vettel) was a bit too optimistic. Had this been the last corner okay, but there were three laps to go and he really had no chance to defend his position because I was so much quicker.”

Vettel apologised for what he called ‘a stupid racing accident’ adding ” Should I have let him go? You always want to fight. Maybe I should have let him go and bring home third place, but that’s life.’

World Champion Lewis Hamilton was the driver to gain most from the incident, making nonsense of McLaren claims that they are way behind the field with their 2009 car, Hamilton finished the race in fourth place behind the Toyota of Juano Trulli who was subsequently punished for using a flexible rear wing, moving the Brit up to third place in the F1 Motorsport results.