Button leads Brawn’s one & two in Spain

Jenson Button wins Spanish Grand Prix as this is his fourth victory of this season. Despite he has been passed by Barrichello at the start, Brawn changed him to a two stop strategy while Rubens was on a three stop. Barrichello finished second ahead of Webber who has made best use of softer tyre in his second long stint. He is followed by team mate Vettel. Vettel’s race passed at the rear of Massa thankls to a good start with use of KERS.

Due to a fuel rig problem at Mass’s last pit stop, Massa was forced to conserve fuel and drop two places during the closing laps. Alonso passed Massa at last lap while he was 16 seconds behind him until Massa started to slow down. Alonso finished fifth. Massa finished sixth just 1.6 seconds in front of Heidfeld. The last point scorer was Rosberg ashe finished eight.

Spanish Grand Prix, Team and Driver official previews

After four back to back fly-away races of 2009 season, Formula 1 is finally back to Europe starting with Spanish Grand Prix this week. Most of the teams are planning to bring major updates to this track and it will be interesting to see who did the best job. All ten teams have done testing here in March, but the pecking order may change as all the teams brought updates to their cars during past four races.

Ferrari, Brawn, BMW and Torro Rosso teams are excpected to bring major updates to this event. Ferrari will have it’s first double decker diffuser solution and a lighter chasis for Raikkonen while BMW will have a lighter chasis and a lot of aerodynamic updates. They also ruled out running KERS at Spanish and Monaco grand prix’s to be able to focus on evaluating updates. On the other hand, Brawn Gp will introduce their first update to the car this season.

Q & A with Martin Whitmarsh

Q. Is Ron Dennis’s announcement related in anyway to the events of the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix?

Martin Whitmarsh: Ron has said that it is his decision and it is not related to an F1 issue. He has decided that it is time to move to a new challenge, and that is what he has done.

Q. Did he not do that when he handed over the team principal role to you?

MW: The first phase of that was to relinquish his role as team principal, but he was still CEO and he was still my boss at that time. So it was a further step of what he announced in March.

Diffusers declared legal

Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, has declared the controversial double-decker diffuser designs on the Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams cars as legal.
After lengthy deliberations overnight, the judges at the International Court of Appeal hearing in Paris rejected protests against the design from Ferrari, Red Bull Racing, and Renault.
The FIA said in a statement: “The FIA International Court of Appeal has decided to deny the appeals submitted against decisions numbered 16 to 24 taken by the Panel of the Stewards on 26 March at the 2009 Grand Prix of Australia and counting towards the 2009 FIA Formula One World Championship.”

Reshuffle at Ferrari

Apart from the ICA’s decision the Chinese GP must be a turning point for the Scuderia after a bad start to the season. During the days after the return from Malaysia there was an air of retaliation: Montezemolo’s and Domenicali’s calls for each and every person to take responsibility for the parts they play were a great motivation for a group, which knew how to deal with very difficult situations in the past and turning them around.

From a technical and organisational point of view the F60′s development programme received some new stimulus. The goal is to anticipate as much as possible the introduction of new technologies to reduce the performance gap as fast as possible, which, apart from the question of the diffuser, seems to be there. A working party has been set up under the coordination of Aldo Costa, which will follow the development programme at Maranello in close contact with the experience made on the track: a crucial element of this group is Luca Baldisserri. The Scuderia Team Manager will follow the single-seater’s development step by step, while his role at the track will be covered by Chris Dyer.

There will be several new aerodynamic features at Shanghai, which have been tested by Marc Gené last week at the Vairano straight. The front wing will be modified next to the front rims and the deviators. The tyres are the same as in Australia and the main job during the three hours of free practice on Friday will be to understand how the two types will run on the tarmac, which is completely different to the one at Albert Park.