Button takes second pole of the season

Jenson Button took his second successive pole position for Brawn GP beating the Toyota pair of Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock in qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

It follows on from that dream start in Melbourne last weekend and it indicates just how well this Mercedes-powered BGP 001 is capable of on different types of race tracks.

Button’s lap around the 3.444-mile Sepang International Circuit was one minute, 35.181 seconds and at one point during the session, the differences between Trulli and Button was only a matter of four thousands of a second! This is incredible when you consider the new regulations for this season, meaning the competition between the drivers and teams is remarkably close.

Not forgetting the top four quickest cars in qualifying are running that clever ‘double’ diffusers, in which a court hearing on April 14th will determined the legality of this aerodynamic device.

Even though Sebastian Vettel qualified in third, the Red Bull Racing driver will lose ten places due to his penalty for tangling with Robert Kubica’s BMW Sauber in Melbourne. As for Rubens Barrichello, who set the fourth fastest time, the Brazilian will drop back five positions after changing his Brawn’s gearbox in practice.

This means Timo Glock will share the second row on the grid with Nico Rosberg in fourth spot for Williams.

Red Bull Racing’s Mark Webber will start the Malaysian Grand Prix in fifth position, ahead of BMW’s Robert Kubica, with Kimi Raikkonen in the tricky handling Ferrari in seventh. His team-mate Felipe Massa – the pole-sitter at Sepang for the past two years – will start in a disappointing P16 after a misjudgement by the team in Q1.

In ninth place following his gearbox penalty will be Rubens Barrichello, ahead of the sick Fernando Alonso. The double world champion is struggling for fitness with an ear infection and it will be interesting if the Spaniard has the necessary energy to drive his Renault on race day.

As for McLaren, this has been a difficult week for the team following that controversy regarding Hamilton and Trulli. The defending world champion has a lot on his mind and with the MP4-24 still slow despite running a new floor to improve the car; Lewis Hamilton could only manage a frustrating P12. His team-mate Heikki Kovalainen also struggled and will start in P14.

But the surprise of the whole qualifying session was Massa’s shock early exit. The team believed its first runs for the championship runner-up would be sufficient enough to get him through to Q2, but as the Brazilian remained in the garage choosing not to run and save a set of Bridgestones for the race, Felipe and the team discovered that this wasn’t quick enough and he drop down the order rapidly as the other cars went faster thanks to improved track conditions. The decision not to go out for a second attempt was a big mistake meaning Massa and the team paid the heavy price of not competiting.

Even Raikkonen was on the cusp on being knocked out and he just made it with the 13th quickest time in that session. The Finn went on to qualify in seventh. So a bad tactical error was made in the Ferrari camp and it will be fascinating what strategy the team will adopt for Massa in Sunday’s Grand Prix.

As for Jenson Button, this is a fantastic result for the British driver and team. If he can keep up this winning performance in the Malaysian Grand Prix and repeat his lights-to-flag win in Melbourne just like last weekend, then Jenson will be consider as a main title contender this season. The others will need to work extremely hard in order to catch Button and Brawn GP from taking the main prize – the world championship.

Anyway, here is the revised grid order for the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix:

1.  Button       Brawn-Mercedes        1:35.181
2.  Trulli       Toyota                1:35.273
3.  Glock        Toyota                1:35.690
4.  Rosberg      Williams-Toyota       1:35.750
5.  Webber       Red Bull-Renault      1:35.797
6.  Kubica       BMW-Sauber            1:36.106
7.  Raikkonen    Ferrari               1:36.170
8.  Barrichello  Brawn-Mercedes        1:35.651*
9.  Alonso       Renault               1:37.659
10.  Heidfeld     BMW-Sauber            1:34.769
11.  Nakajima     Williams-Toyota       1:34.788
12.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes      1:34.905
13.  Vettel       Red Bull-Renault      1:35.518**
14.  Kovalainen   McLaren-Mercedes      1:34.924
15.  Bourdais     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1:35.431
16.  Massa        Ferrari               1:35.642
17.  Piquet       Renault                 1:35.708
18.  Fisichella   Force India-Mercedes  1:35.908
19.  Sutil        Force India-Mercedes  1:35.951
20.  Buemi        Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1:36.107

* Five-place grid penalty for changing gearbox
** Ten-place grid penalty after colliding with Kubica in Melbourne

3 thoughts to “Button takes second pole of the season”

  1. News on Button and Brawn GP’s latest achievements, taken from Autosport.com:

    Jenson Button praised the Brawn GP team’s turnaround in form from yesterday after securing his second consecutive pole position ahead of tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

    The British driver had said after yesterday’s practice that he did not see his team as favourite for victory this weekend, despite having dominated the Australian Grand Prix last Sunday.

    Button struggled with the balance of his car on Friday, but those problems seemed to be gone today, with Button grabbing the top slot.

    He admitted he expected the Ferraris to be the cars to beat.

    “Looking at yesterday’s times, the Ferrari seemed to be the quickest car, so it is a big turnaround today,” said Button. “I am very happy with that.

    “Tomorrow will be a hot race, it is not the sun, it is the humidity, so I have a cool jacket which has been helping me. I can’t wear it in the race as it is too heavy but I am not struggling too much with the heat.”

    “Yesterday I was struggling with the balance of the car. We changed the car overnight and we have improved it a lot. I feel comfortable in the car and excited for tomorrow.”

    He added: “You wouldn’t believe it if I said yesterday I didn’t think we would be here. Last night we had to work on the car a lot.

    “Obviously we had good pace but it wasn’t to my liking. I think we came to the circuit this morning and had a good car, tweaking it for qualifying, all of the way through qualifying the car was working well.”

    Button, who had never scored two consecutive pole positions before, said this one felt better than Australia’s.

    “This one is probably more special than in Melbourne because it is not easy to get one pole position but to have two on the trot, I’ve never done that before,” the Briton said. “I’ve never achieved that in my F1 career, it shows that the car works on different types of circuit.

    “I expected the competition to be pretty tough here, but qualifying was okay for us.”

    Team-mate Rubens Barrichello completed a strong day for Brawn GP, the Brazilian setting the fourth fastest time. He will lose five places due to a gearbox change, however, and he admitted he was not completely happy with his car’s handling.

    “We had a fair and square qualifying,” Barrichello told the BBC. “I should have qualified on pole and then lost the five places, I think that would have been much better.

    “But right now I have a car that is understeering. I don’t know where that’s coming from, and it’s a bit of a sad taste because I couldn’t solve that.”

    Ross Brawn believes Jenson Button is in very good shape for tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix following his second consecutive pole position.

    Button held off Toyota rival Jarno Trulli to clinch his second pole in a row following his dominance at the Australian Grand Prix.

    Brawn said his team had been cautious about its prospects because they weren’t sure about the pace of the competition.

    But the Briton reckons now that the picture is clearer, Button is in good form for tomorrow.

    “We have been running fuel for the last couple of days so we didn’t know where the opposition were,” Brawn told the BBC. “Really Q2 was the first time we could make a judgement.

    “We’ve managed to save some tyres with Jenson, running him on the hard tyre for most of qualifying to the end, so he’s in good shape for the race now. But it is tough, particularly Jarno looked very quick.

    “Jenson has looked very strong. Once we got the reference time in Q1, he looked very strong. We don’t want to take any chances but the fact that we have now got two new sets of tyres for the race is great.”

    He also admitted he was relieved none of the cars near Button will be using KERS tomorrow.

    “There is no one around us with KERS at the start which is a help, because we were dreading that. They certainly have a gain here,” he added.

    “I think Jarno looks in reasonable shape if you look at his long runs and the Red Bulls look strong, so I think it will be a great race tomorrow.”

  2. News on Felipe Massa’s shocking early exit in qualifying. Taken from Autosport.com:

    Felipe Massa blamed a strategic error for his failure to make into the second qualifying segment ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

    The Ferrari driver missed the cut in Q1 after not completing another run in the dying moments of the session.

    Massa said after qualifying that Ferrari felt his previous best was enough to secure a place in the top 15, and hence decided not to send him out again, something which proved to be a mistake.

    “Well, actually I went straight away on a new set of softs. I didn’t do a perfect lap, I did a reasonable lap, but not a perfect lap,” explained Massa.

    “I went wide on the first lap in Turn 14 and then I improved on the second timed lap by two tenths. The team thought it was enough to be inside the top 15 and maybe I thought as well, to be honest, because when I got back to the pits I was fourth.

    “I stayed in the top seven for a while, but then when I started to drop it was impossible to go out again because there was no time to do another lap.

    “Maybe the track improved a lot as well, with the temperature going down many people improved. We just thought it was enough to get in the top 15 and it wasn’t so we dropped completely.

    “Maybe the past is still very fresh in our mind where we had a very competitive car and it was always easy to go out in first qualifying on the hard tyre or whatever and be in the top 10.

    “Now it’s not that easy anymore. Now we need to be able to use our tyres in qualifying because that’s the only way to pass every session.”

    Massa refused to blame anyone for the error, and said it was a mistake from the whole team.

    “As I said, maybe the past is very fresh in our mind so everybody including myself because I didn’t believe that I was going to drop out of the top 15. After the qualifying I thought maybe I could go to 11th or 12th, but not to 16th. I blame everybody.

    “I blame me, I blame the engineers, I blame everybody that was working on the pit looking at the laptimes. It was a team mistake, including myself. But it was a huge wake up call that we need to use everything we have because every session is difficult.”

  3. News on Felipe Massa’s shocking early exit in qualifying. Taken from Autosport.com:

    Felipe Massa blamed a strategic error for his failure to make into the second qualifying segment ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

    The Ferrari driver missed the cut in Q1 after not completing another run in the dying moments of the session.

    Massa said after qualifying that Ferrari felt his previous best was enough to secure a place in the top 15, and hence decided not to send him out again, something which proved to be a mistake.

    “Well, actually I went straight away on a new set of softs. I didn’t do a perfect lap, I did a reasonable lap, but not a perfect lap,” explained Massa.

    “I went wide on the first lap in Turn 14 and then I improved on the second timed lap by two tenths. The team thought it was enough to be inside the top 15 and maybe I thought as well, to be honest, because when I got back to the pits I was fourth.

    “I stayed in the top seven for a while, but then when I started to drop it was impossible to go out again because there was no time to do another lap.

    “Maybe the track improved a lot as well, with the temperature going down many people improved. We just thought it was enough to get in the top 15 and it wasn’t so we dropped completely.

    “Maybe the past is still very fresh in our mind where we had a very competitive car and it was always easy to go out in first qualifying on the hard tyre or whatever and be in the top 10.

    “Now it’s not that easy anymore. Now we need to be able to use our tyres in qualifying because that’s the only way to pass every session.”

    Massa refused to blame anyone for the error, and said it was a mistake from the whole team.

    “As I said, maybe the past is very fresh in our mind so everybody including myself because I didn’t believe that I was going to drop out of the top 15. After the qualifying I thought maybe I could go to 11th or 12th, but not to 16th. I blame everybody.

    “I blame me, I blame the engineers, I blame everybody that was working on the pit looking at the laptimes. It was a team mistake, including myself. But it was a huge wake up call that we need to use everything we have because every session is difficult.”
    Ooops, should have said great post! Waiting for the next one!

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