F1 News
Date: 18/March/2012
Jenson Button gave McLaren victory in the first F1 race of the 2012 season in Melbourne on Sunday, in a race that saw Red Bull battle back from a poor qualifying but little change in fortunes for the under-pressure Ferrari team.
Button bolted past team-mate and pole sitter Lewis Hamilton into turn one and effectively remained at the head of the field to the chequered flag.
A safety car period to retrieve Vitaly Petrov’s motionless Caterham briefly threatened Button’s dominance, but the Briton was able to stay out of reach and finished 2.139sec clear of Red Bull’s reigning champion Sebastian Vettel.
Speaking after his third Australian grand prix victory, Button revealed a strange coincidence: “We arrived this year and my missus said ‘we’re actually in the same bedroom when you won those two previous years’ - so maybe that’s the reason why!
“Every race you win is very special, but I think starting the year strong for this team is really important. The last two years have been tricky coming into the first race, so to come away with Lewis’ pole yesterday and the victory today puts us in a great position for the next few races and on the right foot.
“Big thank you to everyone within the team. I saw our mechanics this morning who said ‘this [grand prix working hours] curfew’s great - it’s the first rest we’ve had since the start of the year’, so big thanks to all of them and everyone at Woking that’s worked those extra hours to get these extra parts out. Fantastic day.”
Vettel began the race in just sixth place, directly behind team-mate Mark Webber. The young German was able to get past Hamilton in the final round of pit stops - which coincided with by the safety car - and his drive through the field stamped out suggestions that the reigning champions are in trouble.
“We decided to stay out when Lewis came in, then the Safety Car came out. I’m not sure, maybe it helped us a little bit to get past Lewis,” he said. “We had a great stop so I think that was the most important thing.
“When the Safety Car came out I thought I would be in a good position to have a go at Jenson… but I didn’t! He was just too quick [on the restart]. Two corners and he seemed to be gone and I was struggling to get up to speed.
“I think I held up Lewis, he was a couple of laps very close with the DRS enabled, so it wasn’t very easy to get away from him but Jenson was out of sight. So there was no way we could have stayed with him. He completely deserved to win today.”
Hamilton, having started the new season so well on Saturday, once again cut a dejected figure on the podium.
“It was just a bit of a tough day [for me] but we have plenty of races ahead so I just have to keep my head down,” he said.
Attempts to tease out why he felt it was such a tough day brought little response, Hamilton revealing only that he “lost too many places at the start”, “didn’t generally have great pace” and couldn’t share any light or where he had lost a substantial amount of time near a pit stop.
The good news for Hamilton is that he looks to have finally got his wish of a Red Bull beating car - and will have little time to dwell on the Albert Park performance before next weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix.
“We always said in winter testing that McLaren looks very strong,” said Vettel. “They had a very solid winter, no issues with the car. They did a lot of laps every day so we expected them to be strong.
“Yesterday they did surprise everyone a little bit with their pace in qualifying. Today in the race I think it was looking a bit better for us, but nevertheless, they are the ones to beat at the moment.
“We need to address [our] problems and make sure we give them a harder time next week,” he added.
But if Red Bull have ground to gain on McLaren it is nothing compared to the performance leap needed at Ferrari, under pressure to deliver a title challenge after managing a solitary race win in last year’s championship.
Instead, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa qualified twelfth and 16th. Massa then failed to finish after tangling with compatriot Bruno Senna, while Alonso spent the closing stages defending fifth from the other Williams of Pastor Maldonado, who eventually crashed.
Alonso finished over 20-seconds from Button despite the intervention of the safety car.
The Spaniard said: "Today the car was better than yesterday and we were closer to the leaders. However, we still have a lot of work to do to reach those who are ahead of us in terms of performance; not just McLaren and Red Bull, but also Mercedes and Lotus.”
Both the Mercedes and Lotus team also left Melbourne with little to show for their efforts, but could feel satisfied with the raw speed of the 2012 racers.
Mercedes star Michael Schumacher battled Vettel for third before a terminal gearbox issue, while Lotus rookie Romain Grosjean likewise failed to finish after qualifying in an excellent third place.
Grosjean’s team-mate and returning former champion Kimi Raikkonen rose from 18th to seventh in his first grand prix since 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment