43°44′4.74″N7°25′16.8″E / 43.7346500°N 7.421333°E /43.7346500; 7.421333
| 2009 Monaco Grand Prix | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Race 6 of 17 in the2009 Formula One World Championship
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 Circuit de Monaco | |||||
| Race details[1] | |||||
| Date | 24 May 2009 | ||||
| Official name | Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco 2009 | ||||
| Location | Circuit de Monaco | ||||
| Course | Street circuit | ||||
| Course length | 3.34 km (2.08 miles) | ||||
| Distance | 78 laps, 260.52 km (162.24 miles) | ||||
| Weather | Sunny | ||||
| Pole position | |||||
| Driver | Brawn-Mercedes | ||||
| Time | 1:14.902 | ||||
| Fastest lap | |||||
| Driver |  Felipe Massa | Ferrari | |||
| Time | 1:15.154 on lap 50 | ||||
| Podium | |||||
| First | Brawn-Mercedes | ||||
| Second | Brawn-Mercedes | ||||
| Third | Ferrari | ||||
Lap leaders | |||||
The2009 Monaco Grand Prix (officially theFormula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco 2009)[2] was aFormula Onemotor race that was held on 24 May2009 at theCircuit de Monaco, inMonaco. The race, which was contested over 78 laps, was the sixth round of the2009 Formula One season. It was won byBrawn GP driverJenson Button, with his teammateRubens Barrichello second, andFerrari'sKimi Räikkönen third.[3]
This year apeace and sport initiative was introduced on this Grand Prix under the High Patronage ofAlbert II, Prince of Monaco.[4]Sébastien Bourdais scored his last world championship points at this race.
The first five races of the championship ended withBrawn driverJenson Button leading the Drivers Championship by 14 points from teammateRubens Barrichello, having claimed 41 points out of a possible 45. Their Brawn GP team was leading the Constructors Championship with 68 points; second-placedRed Bull had 38.5, with their driverSebastian Vettel third place in the drivers championship. Reigning World ChampionLewis Hamilton ofMcLaren was only in seventh place, having accumulated nine points.[5]
Red Bull had a new two-tier diffuser ready for theirRB5 car in Monaco, with chief designerAdrian Newey believing it could be a real benefit to the team. TheAustriandrinks company team had won the2009 Chinese Grand Prix . They had finished third and fourth in the previous race atBarcelona.[6] Force India had prepared several important upgrades for theVJM-02, focused upon giving highdownforce by modifying the front and rear wings. This was to improve performance to score their first points, having not scored points before in a Formula One race. Most other teams, includingToyota andBMW Sauber, had modified cars to give good downforce and high mechanical grip; important for the Monaco circuit's low speed and twisting, slow corners.[7]
In the run up to the race,Ferrari issued a statement declaring that "Ferrari does not intend to enter its cars in the next Formula One World Championship." if "the introduction of two different sets of regulations based on arbitrary technical rules and economic parameters." were to take place.[8] This was in reference to proposed regulations by the FIAWorld Motor Sport Council to introduce a Budget Cap for 2010, and allow technical freedom to those teams operating under it.[9] TheRenault Formula One team made a similar statement, announcing "If the decisions announced by the World Council on the 29th of April 2009 are not revised, we have no choice but to withdraw from the FIA Formula One World Championship at the end of 2009."[10] These statements were the start of theFIA–FOTA dispute over the 2010 regulations. During the event, scenes for the 2010 filmIron Man 2 were shot, which features a historic Monaco Grand Prix race.[11] Prior to the race the drivers complained about a billboard forMartini featuring model Jessiqa Pace was distracting and in the line of sight of drivers as they exit Loews hairpin.[12]
The early practice sessions at Monaco are traditionally run on the Thursday of the week so that the roads can be opened on the Friday for public access. As such, two practice sessions were held on the Thursday, with the third on Saturday morning, followed shortly by qualifying.
The Thursday practice sessions began with Brawn GP establishing its dominance once again; Rubens Barrichello was fastest by three-tenths of a second from countrymanFelipe Massa with a time of 1:17.199, and the two McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen following shortly thereafter. The Brawns continued their form in the second session, placing third and fourth behindNico Rosberg – who topped practice for the ninth time this season with a 1:15.243 – and Hamilton once again. A similar story held true for the Saturday session, with Jenson Button narrowly being beaten byFernando Alonso in theRenault.
The first qualifying session was marked by2008 winner Lewis Hamilton crashing at Mirabeau and damaging his suspension, putting him out of qualifying and gradually knocking him down the order until he would finish sixteenth, ahead of theBMW Saubers ofNick Heidfeld andRobert Kubica and the Toyotas ofJarno Trulli andTimo Glock. The second session saw the departure of the two Force Indias, both Toro Rossos andNelson Piquet Jr.'s Renault while Finland's Kimi Räikkönen and Heikki Kovalainen topped the timing sheets.Giancarlo Fisichella had two times disallowed for cutting the corners at the Swimming Pool Complex and Nouvelle Chicane. The third and final session was dominated by Rubens Barrichello and Sebastian Vettel until a late lap from Jenson Button saw the championship leader take his fourth pole from six starts this season with Kimi Räikkönen the highest-placed KERS-equipped car in second place.
At the start, Button maintained his lead as Barrichello passed Räikkönen on the approach to the first corner. Both Brawn cars and Sebastian Vettel started the race on the super-soft tyres;[13] the Ferraris and Williams started on the soft compound. This provided an advantage, as the super-soft tyres – which had proven to be the better of the two all weekend – started to lose grip drastically after twelve laps as championship contender Sebastian Vettel proved when he started losing up to four seconds per lap on leader Button, because of the difficulty in overtaking at Monaco, this greatly helped the Brawn GP drivers and Kimi Räikkönen (the only three drivers ahead of Vettel when his tyres started to lose grip), because for several minutes all cars behind him found themselves unable to overtake, opening a huge gap between third and fourth, even for several laps after Vettel had been overtaken.
Sébastien Buemi had an accident running into Nelson Piquet Jr. on lap 10 during a passing attempt at Sainte Devote,[14] while Vettel slid into the barriers under brakes at the same spot several laps later. Button maintained a fifteen-second lead over teammate Barrichello for most of the race, who had a smaller gap over the Ferraris of Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa; Massa raised the ire of the stewards after crossing the chicane at the Swimming Pool Complex twice, though no penalty was awarded as both occasions were due to driver error.
In the late stages of the race, Heikki Kovalainen crashed out at the Swimming Pool, spinning and colliding with the barriers. Kazuki Nakajima also crashed out on the last lap of the race at Mirabeau. Robert Kubica was the only other retirement, his race ending with brake problems. In the final phase of the race, the Ferraris pitted for the super-soft tyres, discovering the same graining problem as everyone else over longer stints. The distance between Button and Barrichello halved over the final few laps, though Button was deliberately slowing to avoid encountering backmarkers who were fighting for position. He won by seven-and-a-half seconds from Barrichello, with the Ferraris of Räikkönen and Massa third and fourth.
After the end of the race, Button mistakenly parked his car inparc fermé in the pit lane as is normal for other Grands Prix, rather than on the main straight with the other two podium finishers as is the norm for Monaco. As a result, he had to run down the start/finish straight to the podium.
With his win, Button scored the third-best start to a season in Formula One history, with five victories and one third place. OnlyNigel Mansell in1992 andMichael Schumacher in1994 recorded better starts, with each taking five victories and one second place in the first six rounds. Also, his victory in theBrawn-Mercedes marked the first time in modern F1 history that a single engine has won three races in a row[15] – engines in the 1950s lasted most of a season, sometimes more than one season. It was also the first time since2006 that a driver had won three races in succession. Michael Schumacher was the last to do so, as he won theUnited States,French andGerman Grands Prix.
Cars that usedKERS are marked with "‡"
| Pos | No | Driver | Constructor | Laps | Time/Retired | Grid | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22 |  Jenson Button | Brawn-Mercedes | 78 | 1:40:44.282 | 1 | 10 |
| 2 | 23 | Rubens Barrichello | Brawn-Mercedes | 78 | +7.666 | 3 | 8 |
| 3 | 4 |  Kimi Räikkönen | Ferrari | 78 | +13.442 | 2 | 6 |
| 4 | 3 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 78 | +15.110 | 5 | 5 |
| 5 | 14 |  Mark Webber | Red Bull-Renault | 78 | +15.730 | 8 | 4 |
| 6 | 16 |  Nico Rosberg | Williams-Toyota | 78 | +33.586 | 6 | 3 |
| 7 | 7 |  Fernando Alonso | Renault | 78 | +37.839 | 9 | 2 |
| 8 | 11 |  Sébastien Bourdais | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 78 | +1:03.142 | 14 | 1 |
| 9 | 21 |  Giancarlo Fisichella | Force India-Mercedes | 78 | +1:05.040 | 13 | |
| 10 | 10 | Timo Glock | Toyota | 77 | +1 lap | 20 | |
| 11 | 6 | Nick Heidfeld | BMW Sauber | 77 | +1 lap | 16 | |
| 12 | 1 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren-Mercedes | 77 | +1 lap | 19 | |
| 13 | 9 | Jarno Trulli | Toyota | 77 | +1 lap | 18 | |
| 14 | 20 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes | 77 | +1 lap | 15 | |
| 15 | 17 |  Kazuki Nakajima | Williams-Toyota | 76 | Accident | 10 | |
| Ret | 2 | Heikki Kovalainen | McLaren-Mercedes | 51 | Accident | 7 | |
| Ret | 5 |  Robert Kubica | BMW Sauber | 28 | Brakes | 17 | |
| Ret | 15 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull-Renault | 15 | Accident | 4 | |
| Ret | 8 | Nelson Piquet Jr. | Renault | 10 | Collision | 12 | |
| Ret | 12 |  Sébastien Buemi | Toro Rosso-Ferrari | 10 | Collision | 11 | |
Source:[19] | |||||||
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| Previous race: 2009 Spanish Grand Prix | FIA Formula One World Championship 2009 season | Next race: 2009 Turkish Grand Prix |
| Previous race: 2008 Monaco Grand Prix | Monaco Grand Prix | Next race: 2010 Monaco Grand Prix |
