PF1 Conclusions from Spain...

Interesting read...

A Few Conclusions From The Spanish GP
Sunday 10th May 2009 - PlanetF1.com



Brawn scored a 1-2 at Barcelona. At which point all comparison between the performances of their drivers end...

Barrichello Is A Second Tier Driver For A Two-Tier Era
He's not the quickest but at least Barrichello has an acute sense of timing. With the F1 agenda this season dominated by two-tier diffusers and the proposal for a two-tier sport, here was Rubens' reminder of the critical role that a number two driver plays in F1. It's a team game, after all.

"I don't know how I lost that race," he whined to Button in the immediate aftermath of his defeat. Button's answer was sympathetic. That of Ross Brawn was of greater worth: "Three stopping was 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."

In other words, Barrichello lost because he was too slow. Forget the tedious conspiracy theories. Barrichello was slow when he ought to have been fast.

And that, if we're honest, is the bottom line of his F1 career. His likeability has saved him proper scrutiny and evaluation but Barrichello is a second-tier driver. He is a number two, destined to be the bridesmaid but never the bride.


It's Best To Mix And Match
The only slip-up Button made all afternoon was off the line when Barrichello sneaked ahead of him. In one of those quirks that makes sport the unscientific pursuit it is, it was this reverse that ultimately inspired victory because, had he been leading into the first round of pit-stops, Button and Barrichello's strategy would have been reversed.

"Obviously he was shorter on fuel than Rubens, and we assumed he would pull away at the front and build a bit of a gap. When that didn't happen, it was necessary to split them," explained Nick Fry. Whether Button would have made a success of a three-stop strategy is, of course, an unanswerable unknown. But Brawn's decision made sense; with their two cars out in front, a strategy which keep them apart without wrecking the ambition of a 1-2 was eminently prudent.


The other reason why Button's change of strategy made sense was the location of Nico Rosberg. Barrichello only just managed to emerge from his first pit-stop ahead of the heavily-fuelled Williams. As Button was behind Barrichello at that stage of the race, it's reasonable to assume that he would have ended up stuck just behind the Williams had he matched the Brazilian's strategy.


Button Is At His Best When It Matters
Years ago, back in the days that he was Jacques Villeneuve's race engineer, I happened to interview Jock Clear. During the course of our discussion, Jock mentioned something that has resonated with me ever since but particularly this season with Button turning the tables on Barrichello, Jock's latest charge, after losing out in the mire of 2008.

It was Jock's contention as he sought to explain the various troughs and peaks of Villeneuve's career that the difference between top sportsmen and the not-quite-top was that, in those crunch moments, the best find a difference and tend to save their best for the moments that define a career. It could be a special lap, a special goal, a special putt, or a special try, but the essence is precisely the same. In those moments of definition, the best deliver. And deliver their best.


Button's best moments this season don't deserve to be added to the pantheon of sporting specials but they do suggest that he has the capacity to rise to the occasion, which is the admiring way of saying that the task of winning the World Championship has brought out the best of him.

The three laps in Malaysia, for instance, that won the grand prix were Schumacheresque. This weekend, he delivered a stunning lap in the final seconds of qualifying on Saturday that transcended all of those he had produced over the previous twenty-four hours. And on Sunday he did not put a wheel out of place even when they were clad with the harder rubber that every other driver struggled on.

Button's position at the top of the standings may be primarily due to the machinery at his disposal but his driving in the opening five races of the campaign has been its equal.

Red Faces At Red Bull
Button's position at the top of the standings has, though, been given a considerable boost by the mediocrity of his team-mate and the worrying tendency of Brawn's closest rival to self-destruct.

Although their errors haven't been as conspicuous or as staggering as Ferrari - rivaling the manufacturers of Viagra for cornering the market in cock-ups - Red Bull's have cost them one if not two race wins. Given that the season is just five races old, and that Seb Vettel won one of those five races in China, it's their strategy calls, and not those made at Brawn this Sunday, that ought to be in the spotlight.

In his own post-race commentary, Ross Brawn expressed surprise that the team called in Vettel for his second pit-stop on the same lap as Felipe Massa. It was just as surprising that they did not short-fuel Vettel on his first pit-stop in order for the youngster to get the jump on the Ferrari. Instead, by following the prescribed formula, the team consigned their star driver to an afternoon of studying Ferrari's diffuser while Mark Webber took the gamble of running a 32-lap second stint and jumped both Massa and Vettel.


Yet the real shortcoming in Red Bull's strategy occurred on Saturday when both their cars weighed in at the final round of qualifying heavier than the two Brawns. That approach might have been sensible in previous seasons but not in 2009 against slower, KERS-carrying opposition. Vettel lost out in Bahrain after being beaten off the start to Hamilton's KERS device and it was rank stupidity on Red Bull's behalf to put him in a position to suffer an identical fate at the notoriously-narrow Barcelona behind Massa. Strategy won the day but not in the way the Barrichello-referenced headlines indicate.


Pete Gill