World's nicest driver wins motor race: European GP

In the port area of Valencia, on the eastern coast of Spain, the local streets join up with some purpose-built stretches of asphalt to create a racing circuit, home to the European Grand Prix.  Travel far enough up the coastline, stopping to pass border control on the way, and you’ll arrive in Monaco:

Bernie Ecclestone sold the Valencia race to all involved as being the Monaco of eastern Spain, full of beautiful people bringing their yachts into Valencia’s harbour, paying their mooring fees and brightening the place up while the drivers provided the high-speed background.  You can see what he meant:

It is a little known fact that the Tip Top Bar in Monaco is in fact a warehouse, named after a lunchtime game in which the workforce take a running jump at the highest iron bar stored on the premises.  The man closest to touching it with his fingertips wins a free go at the roulette wheel in the casino over the road, the losers have a whipround to pay for his chips.

Not really.

Valencia’s street circuit is every bit as inspiring as its location.  Slow and twisting for the first two thirds of the lap, featuring needless little kinks in the road before each braking zone that serve no purpose other than to prevent overtaking, it opens up at the end into a series of fast, moderately exciting blind sweepers between concrete walls through which absolutely no overtaking can be done.  The inaugural event, won by the sadly sidelined Felipe Massa, is remembered for a near-collision in the pits between Massa and Adrian Sutil for which the former should have been penalised but wasn’t.  It is alleged, Your Honour, that a motor race took place that day too, but nobody can recall the details.

Pole position is therefore an excellent place to start, especially if you’re in a McLaren with a KERS button.  Lewis Hamilton must have felt awfully confident on the grid, chased by a teammate struggling for race pace and a man born under a ladder to a mother with a penchant for kicking black cats.  Hamilton led away, with Slowpoke Kovalainen and Jinxy Barrichello in close attendance behind.

Behind there was a scrum containing the main title protagonists.  Jenson Button had got a little way alongside Sebastian Vettel into the first fast right-hander and then lifted to avoid contact, losing out to Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg, Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber.  Three abreast into the braking zone for turn 2, Alonso made hay the long way around the outside while Button deposed Webber just in time to have a Renault almost squeeze him into the wall exiting turn 3.  Immediately back on the defensive, Button kept Webber back by means of a short-cut through the following chicane that would later see him forced to cede position to the Red Bull driver.

In the background, Timo Glock’s efforts to sneak a heavy-fuelled point were being spoiled by Sebastien Buemi’s front wing, which was busily machining its way through the Toyota’s rear tyre quickly and violently enough to puncture it.  Luca Badoer, who’ll be in the Ferrari at Spa too assuming you’re not available next weekend, had got himself up to 14th off the line, 14th unfortunately being the ideal position from which to be tipped into a spin by Renault debutant Romain Grosjean.  The red car rejoined last, a position that allowed its pilot to continue his passable impression of a man who’d never seen a car before.

Hamilton was edging away at the front, with Kovalainen not quite capable of matching his pace and helpfully backing up the rapid Barrichello.  Raikkonen was hanging on gamely in his Ferrari, with Vettel just behind and a fast-moving conga line comprising Alonso, Webber, Button, Kubica, Heidfeld and Sutil further back.  On a track designed to allow for it, those six could have put on quite a show.  Here, they stayed in formation until the pit stops, just like Rubens, who took advantage of clear air once Heikki pitted to jump the Finn after his first stop.  Willed on by engineer Jock Clear on the ship-to-shore radio and by a worldwide army of fans, the old boy was having a stormer.

Rubens wasn’t so far away from jumping Hamilton either, but the reigning world champion appeared to have things well under control.  The prospective world champion didn’t, Button mired in the midfield and all set to lose ground to Sebastian Vettel until the German endured a disastrous pitstop.  The fuel rig didn’t seem to deliver any fuel, leading the Red Bull to make an extra stop a lap later.  That probably put paid to any chance of a points finish, but the Renault engine felt there was still sufficient doubt and grenaded itself soon after.  Blowing up a quarter of your season’s engine allocation in one weekend, especially a weekend that sees the champion-in-waiting having a terrible time, isn’t the way to win a world championship, and one imagines that Jenson had a smile on his face as he passed the stricken Sebastian.  He’d have had still more of a grin on his chin at the end of the final pitstops, when traffic saw Webber fall behind Button and out of the points.  Eventually someone will take advantage of Button’s bad run – his eventual 7th place equalled his worst result of the year, achieved last time out in Hungary - but the wait for that man to step forward goes on.

The paying spectators had plenty of time to chew on that as they waited for action on the track.  Some drivers were trying to give them value – Barrichello was 4 seconds adrift of Hamilton and hanging on gamely, Badoer was indulging in his second rotation of a long, long afternoon and Grosjean was performing a half-turn off the back foot going through the final sector – but passing moves were hard to come by.  Earlier in the race, Heidfeld had allowed Kubica to pass him in an area the spectators couldn’t access, and we can only hope that some of them saw it on the big screens, because it was as close to a pass as they were going to get.

The ongoing punctures vs passes contest was settled decisively by the left-rear of the eternally unlucky Kazuki Nakajima.  Running in a quiet 13th, the Japanese driver had his left-rear Bridgestone disintegrate at the end of the back straight.  The long, slow trek back to the pits promoted Luca Badoer to last but one.  Luca’s race pace was at least better than his qualifying effort, and his fastest lap of the race was better than that of two other drivers, but a big drive at Spa next week is all that can possibly see him remain a Ferrari race driver for the rest of the year.  He did at least achieve his stated aim of seeing the finish, something that could not be said of Sebastien Buemi’s exploding left-front brake disc.

The battle at the front looked like Hamilton’s to lose until the final round of pitstops.  McLaren say that they were trying to save fuel and give Lewis another lap, knowing Barrichello would be running longer and was just close enough to be a threat, but that it wasn’t clear whether they’d saved enough to go a lap longer than planned.  They say they were trying to switch the order in which their cars pitted, and that Hamilton was told to stay out a lap longer than scheduled, but had committed to entering the pit lane and couldn’t rejoin the racetrack.  They say that this is why Hamilton’s tyres weren’t ready for him when he got there.

It’s a strange operating procedure that sees mechanics stood in the pitlane without tyres until the last minute, but that’s how a McLaren pitstop works.  This effort was so last minute that Lewis almost ran over the man carrying his left-rear across the pitlane, and that the rest of the pitstop was complete before the front tyres had left their warming blankets.  What should have been 8 seconds in the pits became over 13, and what should have been a close battle for the lead set up by a series of Barrichello fastest laps became a 5 second lead for the Brazilian veteran.  To add to McLaren’s misery, Raikkonen jumped Kovalainen too.

Lewis pushed valiantly to the end but it was a losing battle.  Rubens had pace to spare, as, bizarrely, did his teammate, who yet again started going awfully quickly in the latter stages of the race.  35 seconds up the road from Button, Barrichello saw out an uneventful final stint to claim his first victory since the 2004 Chinese Grand Prix some 85 races ago, then sobbed his heart out on the team radio.  His outpouring of emotion and relief was largely unintelligible, but after a year of heartbreak and frustration he can be forgiven for falling to bits.

What mattered was that he’d kept everything together on the circuit.  Now the nearest challenger to the faltering Button, Barrichello has played himself back into championship contention, and it’ll be fascinating to see how Button reacts to his teammate demonstrating that the Brawn is still a winner.  Rubinho’s success, cheered to the echo by the crowd and applauded by every set of mechanics as he toured into parc ferme, was the most popular of the season so far.

An honest, open, engaging character, the Brazilian is impossible to dislike, and if he should really think about his occasional emotional outbursts before delivering them, he’s somehow even more endearing for not bothering.  Fans across the world are pulling for an unlikely Barrichello title triumph.  petrolheadblog.com, of course, remains impartial: