Jenson Button - 6th Win of the Season

Jenson Button made it six victories in seven races as he stormed away from his only serious challengers - the Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel during the GP Turkey in Istanbul on Sunday afternoon. Over the short haul, probably only Trulli's Toyota and Rosberg's Williams could have possibly held pace with the leading RBR and Brawn squads. 

Notably off the pace was professional sidekick Rubens Barrichello. Rubeno's miserable afternoon included unnecessarily tangling with Kovalainen, a spin, nose damage after a collision with Sutil, and thankfully retiring after 47 laps. The GP world is talking about the retirement as the first noticeable chink in Brawn's reliability but I think they just asked him to pull over and stop embarrassing himself.

Go ahead, get your Twitter on and check out the coverage from both Jalopnik's & Brawn GP's live micro/bloggin'. I wonder how the FIA will try to stifle such unregulated coverage! 

Stay tuned - we're heading to Maggots, Woodcote, and the Hangar Straight;  Silverstone is next.

NKOTB, Brawn GP are dominant

So, I've been remiss. We are already 5 races into the 2009 F1 Season and nary a blog post since Aug of last year. A number of things transpired to cancel my trip to Watkins Glen last year and shipwrights disease  set in. Let's see if I can remedy that...

F1 Recap: it's now post-Race #5, the circus is back in Europa, and Brawn are in the lead. Wha?" Don't know who Brawn is? 

Well, to sum it up, Brawn is formerly Honda, now powered by Mercedes, and purchased by Michael Schumacher's former Technical Director (at Benetton & Ferrari) Ross Brawn for a dollar (or some such nonsense). Spoiled-brat-turned-golden-boy, Jenson Button is 4-for-5 in a completely unprecedented, unforeseen championship lead. Team mate Rubens Barrichello is, typically for RB, second to his team mate but still an impressive second in the championship. Remember, these folks were the 9th placed team in 2008, 8th in 2007, and 4th in 2006... so they've been sliding backward for some time. Of course, Brawn has a history of technical and strategic wizardry and rules revisions for 2009 were intended to be game changers... 

Over the next bit of posts I'll explore some of the changes in those rules, some of the advantages that Brawn GP have achieved, and try to remind you that although Brawn have command over the season thus far, every race has been well contested and we've not seen the in-race, runaway dominance of previous seasons. 

We're now into the European leg of the F1 season, typically this is where the largest technical advances are introduced - stay tuned.