Its all over for the year and with one more race to go, the fan following will be little disinterested. It might be a show of strength for many in the better off teams and may be just another race to the others.
Welcome the champion of the new race, Jenson Button. You did a great job and that was really an effort from a team which just was put together few days before the races started. The team left us wondering for new phrases and adjectives. There was even this rumour mill going around that this was a ploy to garner more eyeballs. Little did they expect that the Brawns would go all the way to the championship in style and when it mattered.
Even before the Brazilian race started it was Vettel who was hogging everyone’s mind screen, I remember once Karun wrote when Force India F1 made to the second place, we fans love the underdogs, and more often than not, the real player has his last laugh as much as it happened with Jenson Button.
Let me admit that I have been the severest critic of this man in no unequal terms, someone who had had the most number of starts, the most over rated driver ever and I could not stand him because he was once Narain’s challenger at British F3. Look at where he’s gone and how Narain struggled to make it to the F1 circuit.
But this year I had a change of heart, you still need to drive even if you had the best of the machine or the external forces played its part. I started seeing him as one more mature driver this time around and the best part was this he had almost closed the championship half way through the season. I do hate him for making the last race an academic one for Abu Dhabi could have been a heated one. On a lighter note, actually we need to give it to Red Bulls for pulling this one, they gave the wrong car to Vettel.
I started looking at him for his charitable ways, and more than that he hid somewhere beneath that unassuming face, his undying thirst to be the champion. Well his time has come and he did it in style.
It seemed destined that he was the winner, and it showed with all other teams trying to decipher the new rules and the diffusers and whatever. Brawns were making merry and made it happen like it was their game every-time they raced. Some circuits were unmistakably trying and then it went on for them.
Mathematically it was almost close and then we need to be sure simply because your F1 car could almost stop at the last corner just few yards before the chequered flag. In all this I do feel a bit for Barichello, the man seems destined to be the best second man to World Champions. He did put up a spirited fightback. I have always bet that Barrichello was the serious contender than Vettel. Except if we did not have the initial glitches that Barrichello faced, this sure would have been the most talked after love hate story in F1 history on track.
This year has a new champion from a new team and at a time F1 is trying to resurrect its image and this does augur well for the sport in genral and fans in particular. Last two years have seen scandals rock the sport hopefully lets not be taken in for another unheard scandal for the next year.
Jenson Button you win hands down and well that’s in the history for now and forever.
R Senthilkumar
Note: this article appeared in the yallaf1.com blogs
