Jenson wins again… but Ferrari fight back!

Another 2009 lights-to-flag victory at for Jenson Button and Brawn, this time at Monte Carlo of all places, but the true story of the race was Ferrari’s eye-catching fight back to the front. Particularly as I’m not yet personally convinced that Jenson and Brawn are far enough ahead in either of this year’s World Championships to beat off a late-season fight-back from Maranello’s finest.

And Jenson himself would possibly be the first to admit that he and Brawn were fortunate in that 2009’s Monaco Grand Prix was a most unusual one, in that there were no Safety Car interruptions. Others teams, if you looked at their fuel strategies, clearly gambled on the fact that there was going to be an early-race shunt. The fact that there wasn’t this time, saw Fernando Alonso and both Williams drivers, for instance, much further back in the pack than they might otherwise have anticipated.

Brawn also made great use of their super-soft tyres during the race’s opening stages, but it wasn’t all quite as simple as their race’s success having been decided by yet another great piece of strategic thinking from Ross Brawn. Because Jenson’s start, and the whole of his race performance in fact was absolutely perfect, and Rubens Barrichello achieved the apparently impossible by ‘out-dragging’ a KERS-fitted Ferrari into the first corner, and second place.

But Ferrari’s performance all weekend was more than enough to show that their step-forward in Spain was no flash in the pan. And the fact that they were quickest all weekend in Barcelona’s super-fast sector 1 a couple of weeks ago means that they must be particularly looking forward to the high-speed swoops of Istanbul Park in a fortnight’s time. Like I say, this season’s World Championships are nowhere near having been decided yet.

And with their brand-new double-deck diffuser being utilised to full effect in Turkey, it may well emerge that Istanbul’s quickest car is actually the Red Bull. They were a bit unlucky in that the first race for which their new Adrian Newey-designed kit was ready was actually in Monaco, because this is a circuit which rewards mechanical rather than aerodynamic grip. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they were 1 and 2 in the time-sheets at Istanbul Park, ten days from now.

Sebastian Vettel would no doubt be feeling happier on his journey to Turkey if he’d had some solid points to take with him from Monaco, rather than having left his car in the wall there. But it was just a simple driving error which caused his downfall, similar to the one which ruined Lewis Hamilton’s weekend on Saturday, and one which I’ve suffered from at Monte Carlo, too.

I hope that this might make sense, but, from the F1 driving seat, most corners at Grand Prix circuits usually begin from when you start to turn the steering-wheel. Corners at Monaco, however, seem to begin from when the driver first touches the brakes in preparation for the turn on the wheel. If they lock up or behave strangely at any other circuit, you’ve usually got time and space to make a correction. Make the same mistake, or momentary lack of judgement at Monte Carlo, however, and you’re usually in the wall.

Which is why I feel particularly sympathetic about Vettel’s mid-race accident, because I had exactly the same kind of crash at precisely the same corner back in 2007 during free practice. And Lewis’s weekend-changing accident on Saturday was caused by exactly the same combination of circumstances. To the TV viewer, these might look like very strange, almost innocuous accidents. Inside the car, however, it makes perfect sense; locked up the rear brakes, turned in too quickly, skated off into the barrier.

That’s not a mistake I want to repeat at Monza this week when I test Aston-Martin’s new Le Mans sports-car, in preparation for the famous 24-hour sports-car race which takes place in north-west France next month. I actually drove the car for the first time a few weeks ago at Portugal’s new Algarve circuit.

It was a pretty cool offer to receive for any racing-driver to receive, this one. Would I like to drive Aston-Martin’s brand-new sports-car at Le Mans this year? Yes, of course! And in the famous duck-egg-and-orange ‘Gulf’ colours made world-famous by Steve McQueen’s all-time-classic 1970 Hollywood movie? Yeah, baby!