Reigning world champion Jenson Button held off teammate Lewis Hamilton to win a traditionally wet Chinese Grand Prix for McLaren on Sunday and see him replace Ferrari's Felipe Massa atop the driver standings.
BEIJING, April 19 -- Reigning world champion Jenson Button held off teammate Lewis Hamilton to win a traditionally wet Chinese Grand Prix for McLaren on Sunday and see him replace Ferrari's Felipe Massa atop the driver standings.
"It is my best victory," said Button, who started from fifth on the grid, one ahead of Hamilton. Button benefited from prudent tire changes as patchy rain played havoc with all the drivers and gave them different conditions to deal with on each lap.
"It wasn't just the luck of calling the weather, we also had the pace," said the British, who joked that he was going to hire a car and race the other F1 drivers back to Europe as a volcanic ice cloud from Iceland continues to throw world air traffic into chaos.
"We still don't know where we are in the dry, but we've proved what we can do in the wet," he added. McLaren, which now leads Ferrari by 19 points in the constructor standings, has found itself playing second-fiddle to the faster Red Bulls and Ferraris this season.
Button beat Hamilton to the checkered flag by the narrowest of margins, or 1.53 seconds. Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg claimed the final spot on the podium after seizing an early lead and setting the pace for the first third of the race.
The result pushes Button, who finished third here last year and won two races ago in Melbourne, to the top of the driver standings with 60 points, 10 ahead of Germany's Rosberg. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso is one back on 49 with Hamilton, while Red Bull hot rod Sebastian Vettel, who finished sixth, has 45.
The race at Shanghai International Circuit got off to an explosive start - and delivered its seventh winner in as many years.
Fiery Spaniard Alonso stole Vettel's pole position within an eye-blink of the get-go but he was subsequently given the equivalent of a one-lap handicap for his illegal jump-start.
Reigning world champion Jenson Button held off teammate Lewis Hamilton to win a traditionally wet Chinese Grand Prix for McLaren on Sunday and see him replace Ferrari's Felipe Massa atop the driver standings.
Force India's Vitantonio Liuzzi then crashed out in spectacular fashion five turns later, taking BMW-Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi, the first Japanese driver to race in F1, and Torro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi with him.
Liuzzi's mishap also sent shivers down Button's spine as safety cars cleared up debris from the middle of the track.
"I had my heart in my mouth after that," he said. "It was very, very slippery out there. Every bit of water I touched, I aquaplaned."
Alonso flashed his brilliance by tearing up the grid from 13th to finish fourth and prove that even a drive-through penalty cannot derail his bid for a third world championship.
He said earlier that the weather would decide the results of yesterday's race, but this proved much truer for Vettel, who was expected to claim his second straight win in the city after also triumphing two weeks ago in Malaysia.
The 22-year-old German holds the keys to the hottest rod in F1 right now, but this didn't stop him coming unstuck as drizzle watered the track and forced him into several early tire changes.
Red Bull teammate Mark Webber also gave Vettel's confidence a knock by overtaking him at the first corner - sweet revenge, perhaps, after Vettel did him the same honor at the last race in Sepang.
Rosberg then moved into what looked like an unassailable lead before Button made his move in the 19th lap and refused to relinquish it.
Hamilton, who fell back to 12th earlier in the race, heaped the pressure on Button later on as the laps peeled away and rain lashed the track. The younger man was soon fogging up Button's rear-view mirror after surviving two decisive mid-race battles.
One of these, with Vettel, included a pit-stop tussle that earned him a slap on the wrist but no points deducted after the race. The second was with seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher, back from a three-year layoff and racing for Mercedes.
"Yes we had a bit of a battle," said Hamilton, who put in another phenomenonal performance after moving up from 20th to sixth during the Sepang race. "It was an eventful race."
Schumacher, who won here in 2006 and holds the lap record, put himself in contention for his first podium finish of 2010 by securing fifth-place in the middle of Sunday's action. He later dropped back to finish 10th.
(China Daily)
