F1 News
Abu Dhabi GP: Vettel Wins Season-Ending Snore
The 2009 F1 season reached its conclusion with a whimper rather than a bang in Abu Dhabi with Sebastian Vettel claiming an easy victory.
Starting slightly heavier than pole sitter Lewis Hamilton, Vettel was able to run longer in the opening stint, allowing him to take the lead from the McLaren driver. Two laps later, though, Hamilton headed into retirement as his MP4-24 suffered brake problems, bringing his season to an early conclusion.
Once safely in the lead, Vettel proved to be untouchable, as the Red Bull racer drove to the win and second place in the Drivers' Championship.
It appeared as if his team-mate Mark Webber could take second place behind him but the swooping Jenson Button took advantage of Webber's failing brakes to close the gap. The reigning World Champ was all over Webber in the final five laps but the Australian somehow managed to keep him at bay. Webber finished second with Button third.
Rubens Barrichello was fourth ahead of Nick Heidfeld, who claimed BMW's final Formula One World Championship points as the team bids farewell to the sport, leapfrogging the Williams team in the process.
Kamui Kobayashi did his chances of a full-time Formula One drive the world of good with an assured sixth placed finish, edging out the vastly-experienced Jarno Trulli while Sebastien Buemi completed the points scoring places.
Race Report
As the sun was setting in Abu Dhabi, the air temperature was still at 31C and the track at 34C (it would fall by only 3C during the course of the race).
When the tyre warmers came off everyone except Fisichella was revealed to be starting on the harder Prime tyre with Giancarlo starting on the Option tyre.
As the red lights went out Lewis Hamilton powered away from pole position while the Red Bulls squabbled over P2. Mark Webber, starting from P3 had a slight look down the outside of Vettel into Turn 1 - thought better of it - and then cut back across to the inside.
With Webber going wide to the outside, Rubens Barrichello decided to look down the inside of the Red Bull into Turn 1 only to find the Red Bull cutting back and swiping off the corner of his front wing. Webber's left rear tyre took a big whack but both were able to continue at full speed.
Elsewhere Kamui Kobayashi showed that he was no pushover, keeping the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen behind him through the hairpin. Robert Kubica was only fuelled to Lap 15 and had to get past Jarno Trulli's Toyota in a hurry. The pair duelled side by side through a few corners before Kubica put Trulli behind him.
Team-mate Nick Heidfeld resisted attempts by Nico Rosberg to get past him while Barrichello's wariness at the absence of some of his front wing allowed Jenson Button to move up from 5th to 4th.
At the end of the first lap the order was: 1.Hamilton, 2.Vettel, 3.Webber, 4.Button, 5.Barrichello, 6.Kubica, 7.Trulli, 8.Heidfeld, 9.Rosberg, 10.Buemi, 11.Kobayashi, 12.Raikkonen, 13.Kovalainen.
The second McLaren driver had had a great opening lap passing five cars on his way to P.13 from P.18 on the grid.
While Rubens Barrichello came to terms with how his car was handling, the surprise at the front was Lewis Hamilton's failure to race off into the distance. Having been 0.7 a lap quicker in qualifying it was widely expected that the McLaren driver would be uncatchable in the race. By Lap 4 he was only 1.3 seconds ahead of Vettel, the Mclaren much quicker in the middle section containing the two
long straights and the Red Bull catching up in the twisty finals section of the lap.
By Lap 8 the gap was still only 1.3 seconds and with Mark Webber matching Vettel's pace - setting fastest Laps on Lap 7 and Lap 9 - it looked like Lewis could easily drop to third after the first pit-stops. Hamilton didn't help his cause over much by running wide at the turn approaching the Yas Marina hotel and reducing the gap to Vettel to only 0.9 of a second.
McLaren were locked in a battle with Ferrari for third place in the constructors' championship and their nearest contender, Kimi Raikkonen, was on a one-stop fuel load back in P12. The grid was split in two with everyone who qualified in Q3 on two-stoppers and everyone else on one-stoppers. The leading one-stopper was Kamui Kobayashi playing the traditional Timo Glock role of running long. On Lap 11, Raikkonen showed no sign of being able to catch him.
Such was the failure of Lewis Hamilton to get away that on Lap 14 there was still only 8.8 seconds between himself and fifth placed Barrichello, and just 2.5 seconds covering the top three. Lewis reduced the Fastest Lap down to 1:40.367 on Lap 16 but was in for his first stop a lap later.
Webber came in on Lap 18 and Vettel a lap later on Lap 19. Vettel was almost hindered by having a Toro Rosso in his pitbox when he arrived. Jaime Alguersuari had radioed in that he had trouble with his gearbox, trundled into the pitlane and saw some Red Bull mechanics waiting around.
Assuming that Toro Rosso had heard his radio message the rookie pulled into the Red Bull pit only to be waved through by Vettel's mechanics. As it was, Toro Rosso were back in their garage and Alguersuari cruised out and into retirement with a broken gearbox.
Vettel's stop went to plan and he exited in the lead, though now with Hamilton between himself and Webber.
Rubens Barrichello had pitted a lap before Jenson Button and come out between Kobayashi and Raikkonen. When Button pitted he came out just in front of the Japanese rookie. With much warmer tyres and on a lighter fuel load, the Toyota driver was able to close up on Button and going into Turn 8 the World Champion went defensive on the inside, braked too late and overshot the corner allowing Kobayashi through.
On Lap 20 the race changed into a procession when the McLaren team radioed through to Lewis Hamilton and asked him to come into the pits to retire his car. The engineers had picked up data from the telemetry that he might suffer a right rear brake failure and though there was no apparent problem, it was safety first.
With Hamilton retiring and all the two-stoppers having come in, this left the positions on Lap 22 as: 1.Vettel, 2.Webber, 3.Kobayashi (not stopped), 4.Button, 5.Barrichello, 6.Raikkonen (not stopped), 7.Kovalainen (not stopped), 8.Heidfeld, 9.Trulli, 10.Kubica, 11.Rosberg.
Before the first stops Vettel and Webber had been close, but in the second stint Vettel began to move away and on Lap 24 the gap was out to 7.5 seconds. The impressive Kobayashi was closing in on Webber and by Lap 29 was just 4.0 seconds shy of him.
Raikkonen pitted for his one and only stop on Lap29 allowing Heikki Kovalainen - who had been tight behind him - to go an extra two laps and jump him in the pit-stops. With Hamilton's retirement, McLaren needed to keep their points loss to Raikkonen to just one point, but now they had track position on Ferrari with both cars fuelled to the finish.
Kobayashi
pitted on Lap 30 with the target of beating team-mate Trulli and scoring his first World Championship points.
The big winner in the first pit-stops, though, had been BMW's Nick Heidfeld. Nick had gone longer than most of the two-stoppers and jumped ahead of both Jarno Trulli and his team-mate to grab 5th place. Robert Kubica now found himself behind Trulli again in 7th place.
The order on Lap 32 was: 1.Vettel, 9.8 seconds in front of: 2.Webber, 11.9 seconds in front of : 3.Button 2.4 in front of: 4.Barrichello, 5.Heidfeld, 6.Trulli, 7.Kubica, 8.Rosberg, 9.Buemi. 10.Nakajima (not stopped), 11.Kobayashi.
Nico Rosberg kicked off the second round of pit-stops on Lap 38, followed by Kubica on Lap 39 and Mark Webber on Lap 40. Rubens Barrichello and Nick Heidfeld came in together and the BrawnGP car only just managed to squeak out of the pitlane in front of the BMW-Sauber.
While Heidfeld was challenging for 4th place, Robert Kubica was involved in a tussle with Sebastien Buemi for 8th place and hooked a wheel inside the Toro Rosso spinning himself back from 9th to 10th place. Nico Rosberg swept through into P9.
When Jarno Trulli took his stop he dropped behind his Japanese team-mate so that the positions on Lap 43 were: 1.Vettel, 2.Webber, 3.Button, 4.Barrichello, 5.Heidfeld, 6.Kobayashi, 7.Trulli, 8.Buemi, 9.Rosberg, 10.Kubica, 11.Kovalainen, 12.Raikkonen.
Vettel's lead was a massive 17 seconds, but Webber was only 5.7 in front of Button. Jenson slowly whittled the gap down lap by lap - 4.8, 4.1, 3.6, 3.0, 2.2, 1.3, and then 1.1 on Lap 50. The Brawn was much better under braking, but the Red Bull had far better traction out of the corners.
In the last two laps Jenson looked both sides of the Red Bull which was slowing down allowing Barrichello and Heidfeld to catch up. Button tried the outside line into Turn 11 hoping that the Red Bull would miss his braking point but Mark got the Red Bull stopped without too much defensive driving.
It was a nailbiting end to what had been a pedestrian race, robbed of tension after Hamilton's retirement. Sebastian Vettel took the race win from a relieved Mark Webber and an exhilarated Jenson Button. Barrichello had to content himself with fourth place and third in the drivers' championship.
Nick Heidfeld and Kamui Kobayashi did their future employment prospects no harm at all by coming home in 5th and 6th places, followed by Trulli 7th and Buemi 8th.
It had been a novel race at a novel venue, but in sheer racing terms it was nowhere near as gripping as the previous GP at Interlagos, F1's least developed circuit.
FH
Results
01 S. Vettel Red Bull 1:34:03.414
02 M. Webber Red Bull + 17.857
03 J. Button Brawn GP + 18.467
04 R. Barrichello Brawn GP + 22.735
05 N. Heidfeld BMW + 26.253
06 K. Kobayashi Toyota + 28.343
07 J. Trulli Toyota + 34.366
08 S. Buemi Scuderia Toro Rosso + 41.294
09 N. Rosberg Williams + 45.941
10 R. Kubica BMW + 48.180
11 H. Kovalainen McLaren + 52.798
12 K. Räikkönen Ferrari + 54.317
13 K. Nakajima Williams + 1:59.839
14 F. Alonso Renault + 1:09.687
15 V. Liuzzi Force India F1 + 1:34.450
16 G. Fisichella Ferrari + 1 lap(s)
17 R. Grosjean Renault + 1 lap(s)
18 A. Sutil Force India F1 + 1 lap(s)
Did not finish
19 L. Hamilton McLaren + 35 lap(s)
20 J. Alguersuari Scuderia Toro Rosso + 37 lap(s)
