Formula One: European Grand Prix
Ruben “Bitch’n” Barrichello wins the European GP in Valencia Spain driving the Brawn BGP-01…finally. Whew! The team has probably sighed heavily in relief!
Barrichello’s teammate, Jensen “Push” Button finishes seventh and rejoices in the fact that in spite of his own lack of pace, rivals Sebastian “Blown engine” Vettel and his teammate Mark “In the dark” Webber both failed to score any points driving their RB5 Red Bull’s, to affect his championship lead. Ruben’s race strategy was performed to perfection and led home the revitalized McLaren MP5/24 of Lewis “Girlfriend is a Rock Star” Hamilton in second and Kimi “Rally” Raikoknen in the Ferrari F60 in third. Ferrari’s substitute driver, Luca “Slug” Badoer, qualified terribly into the last possible position on the grid and raced just as well!
Suffering two engine failures this race weekend has caused Vettel to lose ground on leader Button and Renault has gone on record and profusely apologized to Red Bull for this disaster. Now poor Vettel faces grid spot penalties toward the end of the season as he has worked himself through most of his annual engine allocation already. Each driver is only allowed eight engines for the entire season and if more are going to be required, then for each additional unit that is employed, a ten place grid penalty is charged. There are only six races left in the 2009 season and Vettel only has two engines left to use.
Heikki “Hike your game” Kovalainen finished fourth in his resurgent McLaren MP4/24 after being told to improve or die! With Nico “I’m German” Rosberg following in fifth place driving his Williams FW31, he is looking forward joining McLaren next season as this would certainly put him into position to win races and would also gauge his talents against LH!
Sixth was Fernando “Crowd Favorite” Alonso in Renault R29. Once again he out-qualified his new protégé Romain Grosjean filling in for fired Nelson “Junior” Piquet, and he in turn finished 14th. Seventh was Button, surprisingly off the pace so we assume that he believes all the bullshit that has been written about this up-coming Championship in F1.
The final position of any championship points was secured by eighth placed Robert “?” Kubica, driving the Sauber-BMW for the seventh to last time. At the next race it will be the sixth to last time, then the fifth to last time and so on until there are no more races for the Sauber-BMW car to run.
All in all a predictable and unexciting race in a venue that couldn’t fill the grandstands on race day and may not be back next year if this continues. No one was hit by falling off parts, No rescue helicopters were used, no tires fell off any cars, no one slugged anyone else, no body seriously crashed into anyone and not even one lap was run under the safety car. There were no questionable calls made by the race stewards and no teams filed any protests of the others and there were no controversies at all. Even the FIA was rather quiet after such a long mandated vacation for the Industry that is F1!
Like I said, a dull race except for Ruben “Whoopie” Barrichello for finally winning a race in something other than a Ross Brawn engineered Ferrari, this time it was a Ross Brawn engineered Brawn! Probably the most exciting event was the attendance by guitar legend Eric Clapton!
The next race can’t come soon enough!