Brawn Buttons Up Monaco
Jenson Button and Brawn once again showed a pretty pair of heels to the rest of the teams and easily won the Monte Carlo GP. Easily the most glamorous GP the race itself has over the years been decided pretty much on the Saturday during qualifying. There was quite a bit of overtaking for once this year and some pretty awesome speeds shown by the top 5 of JB, RB, KR, Fm & MW for a good stretch of the race.

While Kimi seems to have put behind his qualifying woes of last year, out qualifying his teammate and just missing the pole by 25 thousands of a second. He definitely must have fancied his chances of leapfrogging the brawns of the start. But he surprisingly made a relatively poor start and let Barrichelo into second place. The race was pretty much settled there and with everyone struggling on the super soft tyres ten laps in and Barrichelo in more than most , Button was able to pull out a decent 16 second lead which he managed to maintain till the end. Another surprising struggler was Sebastian Vettel particularly surprising given his teammate drove a strong race and was able to keep in touch with the Ferraris and the Brawns. Massa put in a storming performance once he was past Vettel and at one stage was lapping at qualifying pace and pulling out fastest lap after fastest lap. Unfortunately for him the other 4 cars were also flying and the advantage was probably not more than a 10th of a second on these laps. It was an awesome sight to catch these Formula 1 cars literally burning up the track and passing within inches of the barriers lap after lap.

Mclaren had a horrid race and though Heiki was running pretty solidly till he crashed Lewis could not really find any pace and must be pretty frustrated especially when his old pal in 6th place Fernando Alonso lapped him. The Toyotas and the BMWs disappointed from qualifying and the Williams were a bit off the pace though Nico drove a particularly strong middle stint.

The good news is that Ferrari seems to have finally found the pace and a bit of reliability but the team is still struggling on the strategy and pit stops making a rash of errors even during this race. Clean stops for Kimi and Massa could have resulted in them finishing ahead of the 2nd Brawn of Barrichelo. Kimi would also be disappointed with his drive overall though he was consistent he was just a bit of the pace, and if he had kept his place at the start he could have been challenging for the lead. Massa didn’t have a great qualifying given that he was not much heavier than Kimi and he unfortunately had button in front of him before his second stop and couldn’t really push hard enough to overtake his teammate and Barrichelo. So once the second round of stops were done everyone basically settled down for the finish with not much happening except to see if the Force would be with India.

But perhaps a case of heartbreak for the Force India with Fisi just a little more than second out of the final point scoring position (on top of the close loss in the IPL final) not a very good day for MR. Mallya.
The Ferraris would go into Turkey with a bit more confidence, given that the KERS (if reliable) should help them there. But they seemed to match the race pace with the brawns and if the supporting cast can get their act together they should be challenging for a win there.

The championship seems to be pretty much in the Bag for the Brawns so all we can now hope for is some exciting racing in the coming GPs….