The 2009 Australian Grand Prix (formally the 2009 Formula 1 ING Australian Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held on 29 March 2009 at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, Melbourne, Australia. It was the first race of the 2009 Formula One World Championship. The 58-lap race was won by Jenson Button for the Brawn GP team after starting from pole position. Rubens Barrichello finished second in the other Brawn GP car, with Jarno Trulli third for Toyota.
Brawn GP became the first constructor since Mercedes-Benz at the 1954 French Grand Prix to qualify on pole position, and then go on to win the race on their Grand Prix debut. The race also became the second race in Formula One history to finish under stabilised safety car conditions—after the 1999 Canadian Grand Prix—following a collision between Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel, who were running second and third, on lap 56. This was Jenson Button's second Grand Prix victory, and his first since the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix.
This also marked the first race since the 1997 European Grand Prix that cars competed using slick tyres.
Report
Background The Grand Prix was contested by 20 drivers, in 10 teams of two. The teams, also known as constructors, were Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Renault, Brawn-Mercedes, Force India-Mercedes, BMW Sauber, Toyota, Red Bull Racing-Renault, Williams-Toyota and Toro Rosso-Ferrari.
The race saw the debut of Brawn GP, whose owner Ross Brawn had bought out Honda Racing F1. The Brawn cars were driven by Honda's former drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button. The race also saw the debut of Sébastien Buemi, driving for Toro Rosso. Buemi became the first Swiss driver in Formula One since Jean-Denis Délétraz in 1995. Buemi replaced Sebastian Vettel who had moved to Red Bull Racing replacing the retired David Coulthard.
Prior to the opening race of the season, McLaren and Renault planned to boycott the season opener due to money not being paid to the teams. However, the boycott was avoided and both teams arrived in Melbourne for the opening round. In a second dispute, several teams protested to the stewards about the legality of the Brawn, Toyota and Williams cars, with arguments that the diffuser on the cars were illegal. The protest was thrown out by stewards. However, the teams that initially protested, had appealed against the decision, with a FIA International Court of Appeal hearing set for after the Malaysian Grand Prix. At the hearing, the diffusers were deemed legal.FIA deem diffusers legal BBC Sport. 15 April 2009. Retrieved on 17 April 2009
The race itself saw a later start time, Having started at 15:30 AEDT (04:30 UTC) in 2008, the race was moved to 17:00 AEDT (06:00 UTC) for 2009. However, the executives of the Australian Grand Prix rejected calls from Bernie Ecclestone to move it to a night race, just like the one held in Singapore, as they want to honour their current contract to 2015 of a twilight race.
Practice and qualifying
Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first was held on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes with weather conditions dry throughout. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour, and was also dry throughout. The Williams cars of Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima set the pace, ending up first and second with only five-hundredths of a second splitting the two. The only other driver that was within half a second of them was Kimi Räikkönen's Ferrari, who was marginally behind Nakajima. Rubens Barrichello set the fourth fastest time in the first official session for the Brawn team, outpacing teammate Jenson Button, who could only muster up the sixth fastest lap. Heikki Kovalainen was the faster of the two McLaren drivers in fifth, with teammate and reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton languishing all the way down in 16th, some 2.3 seconds off the pace of the Williams cars. Rounding out the top ten were Felipe Massa's Ferrari, the Toyota of Timo Glock, Adrian Sutil's Force India (thus meaning that four of the six Mercedes–engined cars were in the top ten) and the first of the Renaults driven by Fernando Alonso.
Rosberg was again the pace-setter in the second practice session, with a time some six-tenths of a second faster than what he achieved during the first 90-minute session. This time, Barrichello was second in his Brawn with the Toyota of Jarno Trulli in third. This marked an improvement for Trulli as he was only 12th in the first session. The only Australian in the field, Mark Webber ended up fourth for Red Bull Racing, ahead of Button, Glock and Nakajima. Webber's teammate Sebastian Vettel was eighth, after a morning session that was interrupted by a hydraulic failure which led him to pull his car off the road between turns six and seven. This ruled him out of the rest of the session, and restricted him to bottom of the timesheets and only four laps completed. Rounding out the top ten were Sutil's Force India, which ended up ninth again, and Massa in tenth. The three teams running the controversial rear diffusers (Brawn, Williams, and Toyota) were consistently the best teams on the track.
Rosberg completed a clean sweep of top spots in practice, by coming fastest in Saturday's practice session. His time edged out Trulli's Toyota by just three thousandths of a second. Button was third, and the only other driver to break into the 1:25 lap times, just under two-tenths of a second behind Rosberg. Massa improved again to end up fourth, and be the only driver from McLaren or Ferrari to finish in the top ten. Nakajima again impressed in the Williams, finishing fifth, in front of Barrichello, Webber, and Glock, who took the next three fastest times and were split by around six hundredths of a second. The two BMW Sauber drivers—Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld—rounded out the top ten, as they appeared in the top ten on the timesheets for the first time, after a fraught pair of practice sessions on Friday.
The qualifying session was split into three parts. The first part of qualifying runs for 20 minutes and eliminates the cars that finished the session 16th or lower. The second part of qualifying lasts for 15 minutes and eliminates cars that finished in positions 11 to 15. The final part of qualifying lasts for 10 minutes and determines the positions from first to tenth, and effectively decides who starts the Grand Prix in pole position. After dominating all three practice sessions on Friday, and again on Saturday morning, Rosberg did not fare so well in qualifying, managing a time only good enough for fifth position. The Brawn cars of Button and Barrichello dominated qualifying with the Brazilian finishing first in the first two parts of the session. In the third session, Button managed to beat his teammate's time by three-tenths of a second, and secured the fourth pole position of his career and his first pole since the 2006 Australian Grand Prix, that ended with Button's car blowing its engine on the final straight. Vettel's Red Bull was third with teammate Webber in tenth at his home race, which would later become eighth after the disqualification of the Toyotas. Kubica improved even further to line up fourth, easily outpacing teammate Heidfeld, who did not make the third session and was running the KERS system, which Kubica was not. After Glock was demoted, Massa was promoted to sixth and was the best KERS runner, ahead of teammate Räikkönen, with Heidfeld and Alonso completing the top ten, after the Toyotas' disqualification. After the session, Hamilton was demoted five places as his gearbox had to be changed, which originally dropped him from 15th on the grid, to 20th. Some hours after Hamilton's penalty, the Toyota cars had their times declared void as the rear wing on their cars was deemed to be illegal. This pushed Hamilton up to 18th, with Glock in 19th and Trulli 20th.
Race
The conditions on raceday were similar to what had been seen on both Friday and Saturday, the air temperature at ; clear skies throughout, with the race beginning at 17:00 AEDT. Button led away and retained his pole position lead into turn one. He was closely followed by Vettel, Rosberg, Massa, Kubica and Räikkönen. Those six led away and were unaffected by the chaos that occurred behind, in turn one. After near-stalling, Barrichello had dropped from second to ninth, and challenged up the inside of Webber's Red Bull as they entered turn one. After being hit from behind, Barrichello's left front tyre impacted with the right-hand sidepod of Webber's car which half-spun the Australian into the BMW Sauber of Heidfeld. Once Barrichello had emerged relatively unscathed, Webber impacted on the front left of Kovalainen's McLaren causing irreparable damage to the left front suspension of the Finn's car. At turn three, Massa attempted a move down the inside of Rosberg, forcing the German off course and as a result, falling behind the Brazilian. At the end of the lap, Webber, Sutil and Heidfeld all pitted to repair damage caused in the first corner incident.
Further down the field, reigning champion Hamilton was progressing through the field having started eighteenth. After the first corner incident, he moved up to 13th at the end of the first lap. He passed Bourdais for 12th on lap two, Fisichella for 11th on lap three, and broke into the top ten, after passing Buemi on lap four. Out front, Button was beginning to establish a lead of over four seconds by the time he set the fastest lap on lap six, with a lap of 1:28.787. Vettel was still running second ahead of Massa, Kubica, Räikkönen with Rosberg completing the top six. Hamilton attempted to pass Nelson Piquet Jr. for ninth, doing so at Turn 13.
On lap ten, Rosberg attempted a move on Räikkönen into turn one, and succeeded to move up into fifth place on track. In the process, Räikkönen was slowed up by the German's move, allowing Barrichello to close up on the straight that leads into Turn 3. The Brawn car closed up thanks to picking up the slipstream, but even this left him several car lengths behind the Ferrari as they entered the braking zone for the corner. Barrichello's car snaked under brakes, and clipped the back of Räikkönen's car, causing more damage to his car. Räikkönen was forced wide by the hit, and Barrichello's momentum initiated a passing move into Turn 4, succeeding and moving into sixth place. The Finn pitted at the end of the lap, changing from the option tyre, onto the prime compound and did not change compounds again for the remaining distance.
Massa and Hamilton both pitted on lap eleven, with both drivers changing from the option tyres, moving onto the harder rubber. This allowed for a scrap for third to begin between Kubica, Rosberg and Barrichello to occur, as the latter two had caught up on the Pole. It would only last one lap however, as Kubica pitted on lap twelve, the final driver to change his first stint super-softs. Out front, Button continued to lead by 4.3 seconds from Vettel with Rosberg third, Barrichello fourth and Nakajima fifth. Lap 16 saw both Vettel and Rosberg pit, with Vettel remaining in second and Rosberg fell to 12th. Rosberg was delayed by a slow left front tyre change, which was a major contribution to his nine-place fall in the race.
On lap 18, whilst running in fourth place, Nakajima ran slightly wide on the exit of Turn 4 and proceeding to put too much power down spinning the car sideways and head on into the wall between Turns 4 and 5. After hitting the wall, his front wing ended up in the middle of the track and directly on the racing line. Button made his pit stop a lap later, and exited pit lane as the safety car was deployed. After the field cycled through, the safety car eventually picked up Button and would remain on the track until the end of lap 24.