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Button proves his worth as raining world champion

Sport

Was that exciting enough for everybody?

Yesterday’s Australian Grand Prix (temporarily) eradicated any concerns that people had over the racing spectacle in Formula 1 after the tedium of Bahrain two weeks ago. And what a way to put F1 back on track! This race had everything – wheel to wheel racing, overtaking, crashes, a safety car period and the suggested cause for it all, the rain!

Let’s put things into perspective, though. The wet start to yesterday’s race certainly set the foundations for the sort of racing action that we all long for, particularly when extricating ourselves from a warm bed at an unearthly hour of the morning, but it was the rain creating the excitement in the first place, rather than a sudden change to Formula One.

Not many people can honestly say they expected Jenson Button to beat Lewis Hamilton at all during the season, let alone in the second race of the year, but boy were the doubters proven wrong. Button demonstrated all the guile of a world champion in ditching his fading intermediate tyres for slicks when the track was only barely drying out. Even he thought it was a mistake when he entered a saturated pit lane. The cries of ‘idiot’ were quickly replaced by ‘genius’ as Button re-asserted himself as a contender and ultimately inherited the lead after Sebastian Vettel’s terminal visit to the gravel trap.

Button’s win, his first for McLaren, elevates him to third in the championship behind leader Fernando Alonso and his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa, but ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who endured a PR nightmare of a weekend down under. The off-track scandals are best dealt with elsewhere, but his brilliant on-track performance was let down with an all-too public critique of his team’s ‘fricking terrible’ strategy that saw him called in for a fresh set of Bridgestone slick tyres, while his new team-mate and compatriot Button stayed out and romped home to victory. It was Button’s call for slicks early on that gave him the win though and after that Hamilton was always playing second fiddle. Jenson 1, Lewis 0. This one’s going to rumble on...

In similar vein to why we refused to write off the 2010 season on the back of Bahrain alone, we will refrain too from assessing the inter-team battles until further into the season. But suffice to say, the return of Michael Schumacher has been anything but sensational so far. He was closer to Nico Rosberg in Australia than he was in Bahrain, but he still has a few important tenths-of-a-second to find per lap. Schumacher’s demeanour off-track continues to impress, however. He has been humble, honest, cheery and affable in his media interviews, openly admitting that he is still in re-acquaintance mode with F1. The fact that a recent fan survey conducted by FOTA, LG Electronics and F1 Racing still has Schumacher as the fans’ favourite driver with almost 20% of the vote says a lot about his continued appeal.

So two rounds into the 19 race championship and yesterday’s fourth placed man Fernando Alonso leads his Ferrari team-mate at the head of the table. Button storms to third place, eight points clear of Hamilton. Whether Button’s win will give him the boost to take the upper hand to Malaysia this weekend is uncertain, but for those statistics lovers out there, it is worth noting that the past four winners at Albert Park (Alonso in 2006, Raikkonen in 2007, Hamilton in 2008 and Button in 2009) have gone on to take that year’s championship honours.

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