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Nope. Jenson didn't needed overtakes in the first part of the season because he was starting from the front rows, and in the second part of the season he was over-cautious. But in the Interlagos race, he really overtook with balls, and in the other part of the season, he showed amazing race pace.
Quote from Boris Lozac :Btw you Brits are lucky What an awesome atmosphere on BBC, commentators are awesome, pre and post race interviews are great, can't believe what a differnce to my local channel..

Ah, but we had several years of James Allen. We only just got rid of him this year.
Quote from Ivo Georgiev :Nope. Jenson didn't needed overtakes in the first part of the season because he was starting from the front rows, and in the second part of the season he was over-cautious. But in the Interlagos race, he really overtook with balls, and in the other part of the season, he showed amazing race pace.

HHmmm... I think he showed good pace relative to the cars around him, I wouldn't say amazing. When you qualify 10-12th in at least the second best car on the grid come race day you should be able to pick up the pieces rather easily.
What if it's more like the 3rd or 4th best car? What if, on some qualifying days, it was only the 6th or 7th best car?
Why do people Assume if a car is killing the constructors or is really high up in the order and they have a bad race they blame the drives due to the fact they think it has to be a Top car everywhere?

Some times the car just can't heat up the tires quick enough for qualifiying, and some times its the other way and they get smashed in the race.
What car other than the red bull is/has been better than the brawn?
Quote from BenjiMC :What car other than the red bull is/has been better than the brawn?

Mclaren on occasions, Ferrari on occasions, Toyota on about two occasions, same for Force India.

Brawn is just the most consistent, and they have drivers which can put Ross Brawn plan into real work.

And remember the grid from front to last is just about 1.5 sec apart.....so even if you have the best car on the grid, you don't really have that much of a car advantage charging from the back.
imo none of those cars are better than the brawns, yes they beat the brawns but they aren't better. The drivers in them made the most out of the situations they were put in.
Quote from BenjiMC :imo none of those cars are better than the brawns, yes they beat the brawns but they aren't better. The drivers in them made the most out of the situations they were put in.

not at all.

Each race a car can be better then then a car it got beaten by in the last race, this is F1 the cars are always improving one car is barely ever the fastest the entire season.
Quote from Becky Rose : Just like the people who build the Mercedese F1 engines at Ilmor. They may now do some design at their central R&D facility, but it still draws on the earlier Ilmor designs.

It's not a big deal, but the F1 engine isn't designed and built at Ilmor anymore, and hasn't been since 2005.

Mercedes started a buy out of Ilmor in 2002 and it was completed in 2005, although the Special Projects offshoot (including the Honda IRL engines project) and the Ilmor name were bought from Mercedes by Roger Penske and Mario Illien.

Mercedes High Performance Engines are still based in the UK (next door to the UK Ilmor facilities), although obviously they work in partnership with the Mercedes mothership in Germany. I'm not sure how nationalistic anyone can be about any auto manufacturer these days, with factories popping up everywhere. Although MHPE maybe mainly based in Britain, and may even be a profitable business in it's own right, it's certainly benefited from Mercedes HQ cash and technical input over the years. It's no doubt also suffered from Mercedes HQ interference and internal politics, but many subsidiary companies have to deal with that.
I'm a bit late to this one, but congratulations to Button...I think the drive in Brazil was a nice way to 'race' to clinch a deserved championship. Helped by race attrition, Vettel's equally bad grid position, and Ruben's failing to win from pole, but at least Button put up a robust race performance. In fact, in my opinion, most of his races in the 2nd half of the year were stronger than the results instantly suggest. And as a season of two halves, he made the most out of the car at it's best (critically more than his teammate), and in the second half, when hampered by a poor grid positions, his mistake free race drives still salvaged crucial points.

The Brawn's early season advantage was eroded over the season, but it was a few lower ambient temperature races after Turkey that really highlighted the Brawn's biggest weakness relative to the closest rivals. Whereas the Brawn's gentle use of tyres had helped at some of the hotter early season races, it was hindrance at the colder races. Getting the temperatures up to working temp proved difficult, especially over one out and one flying lap in qualifying. Jenson's ultra smooth style suffered more than Rubens, but even Rubens was suffering. This led to a drop off in qualifying results for Jenson and Rubens, even when they effectively got the most out of the car, and also lead to a few more mistakes in qualifying from Jenson. The most costly was Spa, where 14th on the grid left him a target for Grosjean's rookie dive bomb move. Not quite as costly was Valencia, but the squeeze by Vettel at the start put him further down the order, at a track where the car had race winning pace, Jenson was left battling his way to 2 points. But I think, rather than a reason for all the criticism of an unworthy champion, it was the fact he still put in error free races to minimize the damage that in my mind he's the most deserving driver this year. Brawn have given him a great car, a great team of engineers, great reliability, but he was the driver who got the job done, and drove some great races.

So, overall, Jenson is a worthy 2009 WDC. He's immensely fast, makes very few mistakes, and has great race craft. If he has a weakness it's not being as adaptable to a car that's not balanced as some drivers are, especially over a single lap. I don't want to over exaggerate this weakness though, as I think it has already been made more of than it is. In contrast to such a great start to the season, evaluating Jenson's last 9 qualifying and race results, it is simplistic to think he choked, or it was 'all down to the car'. By mid season we had several other cars becoming race winning machinery, a few others that were intermittenlty close (Force India anyone??), and a field that is now almost all covered by only one second in qualifying, so it was unlikely to continue as dominantly as it started. In fact, the car dominance of 6 wins in the first 7 was probably exaggerated by a few mistakes from other teams, especially Red Bull.

And a few final thoughts:
- The double diffuser was not illegal. It may have not been to the 'spirit' of the intention of the rule changes, but the only people who moan about the 'spirit' of rules in F1 are those caught with their pants down.
- Jenson does not 'steal' Rubens setups. It's a team effort, and in a season with no testing, it is critical information about setups, tyre use, etc. flows between both sides of the garage during the practice sessions. There were times when Jenson took Ruben's direction on setup, and vice versa. Rubens and Jock Clear are undoubtedly very experienced and technically strong, but Jenson and Andrew Shovlin are not setup 'idiots'.
Quote from Ivo Georgiev :Sorry, but Vettel was very inconsistent, so was Rubens. .

Huh?

Rubens:

Podium finishes : 37.5%
Top Six finishes: 68.75%
Points finishes : 87.5%
DNFs : 6.25%


Vettel:

Podium finishes : 43.75%
Top Six finishes: 62.5%
Points finishes : 68.75%
DNFs : 18.75%

Rubens has been more consistently in the points and more consistently in the top six places with less out of points finishes and DNFs than Vettel.
Vettel has been quite a bit more inconsistant than Rubens.

As a comparison:

Button:


Podium finishes : 50%
Top Six finishes: 75%
Points finishes : 93.75%
DNFs : 6.25%

Pretty obvious why he won the championship really
Quote from BenjiMC :imo none of those cars are better than the brawns, yes they beat the brawns but they aren't better. The drivers in them made the most out of the situations they were put in.

The redbull were clearly better in Nurburgring, Forca India clearly better in Spa. (Don't tell me both Fisi and Sutil suddenly both find an extra half a second on that specific day, in all practices sessons, qualifying and race!)
yes, that car was better there and another car was better at another track. but none of them were consistently good.
No team has been consistently good this season really.
Quote from Mustafur :No team has been consistently good this season really.

Well Toro Rosso have been consistently shit all season, so it's not all swings n roundabouts.
Agree BlueFlame

And nakajima of drivers

Formula 1 Grande Premio Petrobras do Brasil 2009
(467 posts, started )
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