ING Turkish Grand Prix
It was the same old story again in Turkey, as Jenson Button made it six wins from seven races this season. On a track where Red Bull was expected to run the Brawn cars very close, Button simply blew-away his competition and conquered Istanbul Park. On Saturday, Button delivered a near-perfect lap at the very end of Q3 and looked set for pole-position. But, young Sebastian Vettel had other plans, and pushed the Englishman’s Brawn GP car to the second place. Row 2 also had a Brawn and a Red Bull; Reubens Barichello and Mark Webber. From that point onwards, it started going all-wrong for Vettel. He managed to hold-on to his lead at the start, but couldn’t complete a full-lap in the lead. Going into turn nine, the German’s Red Bull had an off-track excursion and Jenson Button pounced. Thereafter, it was another error-free performance from Jenson. People are describing his performance this season to be ‘Schumacher-esque’!
All the bad luck with the Brawn team seems to be with Rubens Barichello. He
made a dreadful start, slipping nine places from 3rd to 12th. It was even worse than his Australian Grand Prix getaway, where he fell back by five places. Jenson Button was expected to struggle at the start, as Vettel and Barichello were on the clean-side of the track. The Istanbul Park circuit was very ‘green’ as the weekend’s Formula1 race is the only event hosted by the Turkish track. All drivers were complaining of a lack of grip for the practise sessions, but with increased build-up of rubber on the track, it kept getting better.
Sebastian Vettel was very lightly-fuelled for the race, and he was running a three-stop strategy. Just before his second stop and with a car that was lighter than Jenson’s, Vettel closed-in quickly and got bigger and bigger in Jenson’s mirror. However, he couldn’t pass Jenson and getting stuck behind spoiled his race-strategy. His team-mate Mark Webber was on a 2-stop, and Vettel eventually got passed by him as he couldn’t open a big-enough gap. Barichello, meanwhile, provided the afternoon’s entertainment but not the results. In his attempts to climb back up the grid, he had a spin after a brush with Kovalainen and nose damage after a collision with Sutil, and retired after 47 laps. This was the first non-finish for a Brawn GP car this season.
Jarno Trulli and his Toyota team made a huge improvement from Monaco to bring his car home in 4th place. He and Williams’ Nico Rosberg had a race long battle for fourth which went the Italian’s way. Rosberg jumped Trulli at the first round of pit-stops, but Trulli won it back at the next stop, as he ran 5 laps longer. Team-mate Timo Glock came home 8th, to give Toyota a good weekend. Rosberg and Williams-Toyota collected 3 points for the 5th place finish. Kazuki Nakajima was on-course for some points as well. However, Williams got his second pit-stop wrong and blamed a faulty ‘wheel nut retention device’ for the slow stop.
Felippe Massa was the winner in this anti-clockwise circuit the last three times. However, he stood no chance in this year’s Ferrari. He finished 6th and Kimi Raikkonen came home 9th. BMW Sauber became the last team to introduce double-decker diffuser and there was a slight improvement with Robert Kubica finishing 8th, his first points this season. The Turkish Grand Prix, thus didn’t make for spectacular racing. Most of the action was packed into the first lap and that was where Jenson Button won the race. The famous turn eight, which include four apexes continued to fascinate drivers; this being the entire calendar’s longest corner. The next race is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Jenson Button, thus, goes into his home race as the undisputed king of the season.
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