Barrichello Wins After A Five Year Gap

August 25, 2009

Barrichello Wins After A Five Year Gap

Rubens Barrichello won a F1 Grand Prix after a gap of almost 5 years as he secured a victory at the European Grand Prix in Valencia on Sunday. It was an amazing weekend for the 37 year old Brazilian as he finished the race ahead of Hamilton.

Hamilton started the race in the pole position and there was a tough fight from the start of the race for the top spot, but Barrichello took the lead as Hamilton went for his final pit stop and was delayed due to a tyre change fumble. To everyone’s surprise in a post race analysis it was revealed that Barrichello would have still won the race even if there was no fumble in the McLaren pit.

Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen had a great start of the race as his KERS assisted car pulled into third place which made sure that he had podium finish if nothing went wrong. He managed to grab the third place. Rosberg continued his good run in Valencia too with a fifth place finish and a made a tally of seven consecutive points finish. Alonso in his home grand prix managed to finish sixth.

Current F1 championship leader Jenson Button finished seventh in his BGP001 and leads the table with 72 points, a clear 18 points difference over team mate Barrichello who is at 54 ahead of Webber. BMW had scored there last point in Silverstone, but Robert Kubica got them the final point by finishing eighth as he took the spot from Webber on the second pit stop.

Red Bull team had a disappointing day at Valencia as Webber lost his season second sport to Barrichello and finished a disappointing ninth and team mate Vettel retired on the 24th lap due to an engine failure. Force India drivers could only manage a tenth and twelfth finish, though during the middle part of the race Fisichella was running at eighth position but could not capitalize on it.

Grosjen made his F1 debut in Valencia but his race did not start well as he damaged his front wing and later on lost a lot of time due to a half spin. Biggest disappointment of the day was Luca Badoer who made his debut for Ferrari and could only finish second last at seventeenth position.

2009 FORMULA 1 TELEFONICA GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE