Brawn GP's Jenson Button on his way to his second consecutive pole-to-checkered victory last week in Malaysia.
This week’s Tornante (my weekly automotive column for the Santa Monica Daily Press; www.SMDP.com) was slated to be oh-so-serious and ever-so-insightful, all about the Obama Administration’s sacking of General Motors’ CEO Rick Wagoner and the future of GM and Chrysler, both probably headed for bankruptcy, as Ford hangs on to solvency by a thread. But I needed a break. So I made the Command Decision to let Wagoner, Obama, Ford and Chrysler go their merry ways, at least this week, anyway, and focus on the auto industry’s funny pages – motor racing.
We also did this recently in previewing the upcoming Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (from which I’ll be live blogging for SMDP, Huffington Post, SteveParker.com, Whipnotic.com, et al, and doing my TalkRadioOne.com weekend radio shows live, too) and, quite unexpectedly, we’re focusing on the auto industry’s fun factor again this week.
So what’s such big racing news?
It comes from the world’s most sophisticated and expensive racing series, Formula 1. The winner of the F1 season is called the World Driving Champion, and very few argue with that title.
Popular, colorful former F1 and CART champ Nigel Mansell, after winning a race, popularized the saying, "All credit to the boys (behind the scenes)" - In this case, the boys being, l to r, Rubens Barrichello, Ross Brawn and Jenson Button, sharing the podium following the team's one-two start and one-two finish in Oz' F1 season-opener, March 29.
Dynasties rule in F1; teams like Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, BMW and Mercedes-Benz traditionally dominate the sport for years and even decades on end, while drivers like Schumacher, Fangio, Lauda, Andretti, Hunt, Alonso, Raikkonen, Hamilton and more become brands as strong and famous as long-time F1 sponsors including John Player, Parmalat, TAG Heuer, Olympus, Canon and Nikon cameras and scores of others.
Upstarts are neither expected nor appreciated in F1. Convention rules.
Which makes the past two weeks of F1 history all the more strange and wonderful.
Brawn-Mercedes doesn't have many sponsors - yet. One of the few is Richard Branson who brings with him his Virgin Airlines.
This past F1 off-season, Honda closed their factory F1 team. The first Japanese company in F1 entered the sport in the 1960s (see the 1966 James Garner/Toshiro Mifune-starring, John Frankenheimer-directed “Grand Prix” for the inside tale of Honda’s entry into the sport with their American driver, Richie Ginther; along with 1971’s Steve McQueen-starring “LeMans,” the two films are considered the best ever about motor racing).
Honda claimed the company would save $240 million annually by ending their current F1 involvement, a cost which they felt could not be justified given the world economy; many analysts (this one included) placed that yearly budget closer to $400 million for the two-car team and 1,000-or-so engineers who made them go.
Honda probably didn’t expect what happened next, and neither did most in the motor racing business. After piloting Jordan and Stewart GP cars, and before his Honda and Brawn F1 rides, Rubens Barrichello copped a second-place season finish as second-banana to Michael Schumacher at Ferrari.
Ross Brawn, probably the best F1 race-strategist and certainly the sport’s top engineer, having helmed the Ferrari team during Michael Schumacher’s amazing string of seven World Driving Championships, put together a consortium and bought Honda F1, along with its veteran drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello; all this happened only about six weeks before the 2009 F1 season began in Australia just two weeks ago.
Brawn then dropped the team’s Honda engines and contracted with Mercedes-Benz to use their powerplants, known for their dependability and the motivating force behind the McLaren team and their UK driver, Lewis Hamilton, the defending world driving champion.
As Dr. Hunter S. Thompson put it, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” And Brawn GP, a somewhat weird team to begin with, suddenly, shockingly turned pro in a very big way.
In the F1 season-opener in Australia on March 29, Brawn-Mercedes GP’s Button and Barrichello qualified one-two, and finished the race in that same order.
The good Dr. Thompson called it right when it came to "sports" and "the weird;" Brawn-Mercedes GP fits the bill.
The only sports analogy even close to Brawn GP’s shocking and thrilling debut was when the NY Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in 1969, in the third NFL-AFL Championship game, the first football game dubbed “Super Bowl.” For those who may not remember, the Joe Namath-led Jets’ win was, to put it mildly, unexpected.
Last week, F1’s second race of the year, in Malaysia, saw Button again winning the pole position in qualifying and teammate Barrichello starting eighth. Button took the win again, too, and Barrichello placed fifth.
Before these two consecutive victories, Button had been in 155 F1 races and had won exactly once, with a total of three pole positions before his two so far this season.
He’s had nine wins and 13 poles in his long career, and one second-place season result, driving for, apart from Ferrari and Honda, the Jordan and Stewart Grand Prix teams. Look up “journeyman driver” in an imaginary motor racing dictionary and you’ll find the Brazilian Barrichello.
Good for Ross Brawn and good for motor racing generally and F1 specifically. It’s a sport which can still surprise.
And, especially, good for two old F1 drivers who were thought all-but-retired just six weeks ago; today, these drivers and their brand-new team are leading in the points for this year’s world driving and manufacturer titles.
What else could I say; thanks to the brilliant brains of Mercedes-Benz creator Karl Benz and engineer Gottlieb Daimler which made this fantastic car :)
Posted by: Floyd the Mercedes Freak | June 05, 2009 at 11:18 AM