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The 2009 Monaco Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race
and the sixth round of the 2009 Formula One season. It was
won by Brawn GP driver Jenson Button, with
his team-mate Rubens Barrichello second, and Ferrari's Kimi
Räikkönen third.[2]
This year a peace and sport
initiative was introduced on this Grand Prix under the High
Patronage of HSH Prince Albert II of
Monaco.
Report
Background
Going into the round, Brawn driver Jenson Button led the Drivers
Championship by 14 points from team-mate Rubens
Barrichello, having claimed 41 points out of a possible 45. Sebastian
Vettel trailed Barrichello by 4 points in the Red Bull, while
World Champion Lewis Hamilton of McLaren lay in seventh place with 9
points.
Brawn led the Constructors' Championship by 29.5 points from Red
Bull, who were a further 12 points ahead of Toyota. McLaren were the
only other team to have reached double figures in points, while Force India were the
only team yet to score points.
Red Bull had a new two-tier diffuser ready for their RB5 car in Monaco,
with chief designer Adrian Newey believing it could be a real
benefit to the team.[3] The Austrian drinks company team had already won the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix and
Sebastian Vettel was the only driver to have qualified in the first
three positions at every race up to this point in the season. They
had finished third and fourth in the previous race at Barcelona.
As part of a partnership between Steinmetz Diamonds and McLaren,
the helmets of Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen were diamond-encrusted with their
driver numbers 1 and 2 respectively.[4][5][6]
Practice
and qualifying
The early practice sessions at Monaco are traditionally run on
the Thursday of the week so that the roads can be opened on the
Friday for public access. As such, two practice sessions were held
on the Thursday, with the third on Saturday morning, followed
shortly by qualifying.
The Thursday practice sessions began with Brawn GP establishing
its dominance once again; Rubens Barrichello was fastest by
three-tenths of a second from countryman Felipe Massa with a time of 1:17.199, and
the two McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen following
shortly thereafter. The Brawns continued their form in the second
session, placing third and fourth behind Nico Rosberg – who topped practice for the
ninth time this season with a 1:15.243 – and Hamilton once again. A
similar story held true for the Saturday session, with Jenson
Button narrowly being beaten by Fernando Alonso in the Renault.
The first qualifying session was marked by 2008
winner Lewis Hamilton crashing at Mirabeau and damaging his
suspension, putting him out of qualifying and gradually knocking
him down the order until he would finish sixteenth, ahead of the BMW Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and
Robert Kubica
and the Toyotas of Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock. The second session saw the
departure of the two Force Indias, both Toro Rossos and Nelson
Piquet, Jr.'s Renault while Finland's Kimi Räikkönen and Heikki
Kovalainen topped the timing sheets. Giancarlo
Fisichella had two times disallowed for cutting the corners at
the Swimming Pool Complex and Nouvelle Chicane. The third and final
session was dominated by Rubens Barrichello and Sebastian Vettel
until a late lap from Jenson Button saw the championship leader
take his fourth pole from six starts this season with Kimi
Räikkönen the highest-placed KERS-equipped car in second place.
Race
At the start, Button maintained his lead as Barrichello passed
Raikonnen on the approach to the first corner. Both Brawn cars and
Sebastian Vettel started the race on the super-soft tyres;[7] the
Ferraris and Williams started on the soft compound. This provided
an advantage, as the super-soft tyres – which had proven to be the
better of the two all weekend – started to lose grip exponentially
after twelve laps as championship contender Sebastian Vettel proved
when he started losing up to four seconds per lap on leader Button,
because of the difficulty in overtaking at Monaco, this greatly
helped the Brawn GP drivers and Kimi Räikkönen (the only three
drivers ahead of Vettel when his tyres started to lose grip),
because for several minutes all cars behind him found themselves
unable to overtake, opening a huge gap between third and fourth,
even for several laps after Vettel had been overtaken..
Sébastien Buemi had an accident running into Nelson Piquet Jr.
on lap 10 during a passing attempt at Sainte Devote,[8] while
Vettel slid into the barriers under brakes at the same spot several
laps later. Button maintained a fifteen-second lead over team-mate
Barrichello for most of the race, who had a smaller gap over the
Ferraris of Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa; Massa raised the ire
of the stewards after crossing the chicane at the Swimming Pool
Complex twice, though no penalty was awarded as both occasions were
due to driver error.
In the late stages of the race, Heikki Kovalainen crashed out at
the Swimming Pool, spinning and colliding with the barriers. Kazuki
Nakajima also crashed out on the last lap of the race at Mirabeau.
Robert Kubica was the only other retirement, his race ending with
brake problems. In the final phase of the race, the Ferraris pitted
for the super-soft tyres, discovering the same graining problem as
everyone else over longer stints. The distance between Button and
Barrichello halved over the final few laps, though Button was
deliberately slowing to avoid encountering backmarkers who were
fighting for position. He won by seven-and-a-half seconds from
Barrichello, with the Ferraris of Räikkönen and Massa third and
fourth.
After the end of the race, Button mistakenly parked his car in
parc fermé in the
pit lane as is normal for other Grands Prix, rather than on the
main straight with the other two podium finishers as is the norm
for Monaco. As a result he had to run down the start/finish
straight to the podium.
Classification
Cars that used KERS are marked with "‡"
Qualifying
The
Toyota team
endured one of the worst weekends of its time in Formula One.
Jarno Trulli
(pictured) and
Timo
Glock qualified on the back row of the grid.
Lewis Hamilton
crashed his car in the first part of qualifying, restricting
himself to sixteenth position on the grid.
Race
Notes
- Jenson
Button's victory in the Brawn-Mercedes marked the first
time in modern F1 history that a single engine has won three races
in a row [10] -
engines in the 1950s lasted most of a season, sometimes more than
one season.
- Prior to the race the drivers complained about a billboard for
Martini featuring Jessiqa Pace as it
was distracting and in the line of sight of drivers as they exit
Loews hairpin.[11]
- With this race, Jenson Button scored the third-best start to a
season in Formula One history, with five victories and one third
place. Only Nigel
Mansell in 1992 and Michael
Schumacher in 1994 have
had better starts, with each taking five victories and one second
place in the first six rounds. In order for Button to break
Schumacher's record (despite being tied with Mansell, Schumacher
won the seventh round of 1994, but was excluded from the eighth)
Button would have to win both the Turkish and British Grands Prix.
- This was Button's first hat-trick of wins (3 in a row), and the
first since Michael Schumacher won the United States Grand Prix,
French Grand Prix and German Grand Prix in 2006.
- At the completion of lap 47, Rubens Barrichello became the
driver who has completed most laps in Formula One history,
surpassing former team-mate Michael Schumacher's total of 13,909
laps.[12]
- Lap Leaders: Jenson Button 77 (1-51, 53-78), Kimi
Räikkönen 1 (52)
Standings after the race
- Drivers' Championship standings
|
- Constructors' Championship standings
|
- Note: Only the top five positions are
included for both sets of standings.
References
External
links
Jenson Button
Felipe Massa
Kimi
Räikkönen
Sebastian
Vettel
Mark Webber
Fernando
Alonso
Kazuki
Nakajima
Sébastien
Buemi
Giancarlo
Fisichella
Sébastien Bourdais
Robert Kubica
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