Rubens Barrichello took another chunk out of team-mate Jenson Button’s championship lead as he led an emphatic Brawn GP 1-2 in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.
But any disappointment Button may have felt at losing the intra-team duel was more than offset by relief at the fact that a disastrous race for Red Bull Racing all but eliminated Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber from title contention.
Webber was sidelined in a first-lap collision with Robert Kubica’s BMW, while Vettel mustered just one point for eighth place after a scrappy drive.
It all means Barrichello trims Button’s championship lead to 14 points, with Vettel and Webber respectively 26 and 28.5 points adrift with 40 points still up for grabs.
The Brawn duo used superior one-stop strategies to overhaul the two-stopping McLaren of Lewis Hamilton, which led the early stages from pole position, with Barrichello leading the Brackley squad's charge throughout.
Having dropped to third behind Button following his second stop, Hamilton chased his countryman for all he was worth in the closing stages before dramatically crashing on the final lap at the exit of the first Lesmo.
The accident promoted Kimi Raikkonen to a surprise podium finish for Ferrari in front of the tifosi, the Finn repeating his Spa trick of fending off a faster Force India, this time Adrian Sutil, thanks to his KERS power boost.
Sutil harried Raikkonen all the way but had to make do with fourth place, easily the best result of his young F1 career, and underlined his pace by setting the race's fastest lap.
But like former team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella at Spa, Sutil would likely have beaten the Ferrari had he been able to stay ahead in the early laps.
Hamilton had made a decent getaway from pole, but the similarly KERS-equipped Raikkonen was even sharper out of the blocks from the second row and put two wheels on the grass in a bid to pass the McLaren down the outside.
His McLaren rival covered his advances, however, and the Ferrari had to settle for taking second place away from Sutil going into the chicane.
Meanwhile behind, Barrichello crucially moved to the head of the one-stoppers after moving ahead of fourth-placed Heikki Kovalainen in the other McLaren.
Otherwise the rest of the pack all managed to expertly navigate the tight Rettifilo without incident or chicane-cutting.
However, the usual frantic, and often chaotic, action associated with a first lap at Monza would only be delayed until the second chicane.
First Webber’s championship hopes suffered what is surely a terminal blow after he collided with the fast-starting BMW of Kubica in the middle of the Roggia.
The Red Bull driver spun out into the gravel, while Kubica suffered damage to one of his front wing endplates – race control soon ordering the BMW man to pit as bits of the wing were flailing off the car.
Then Kovalainen lost out to the second Brawn of Button going into the second Lesmo, the championship leader bravely hustling his BGP 001 down the inside of the McLaren after Kovalainen had been caught up trying to repass Barrichello.
The struggling Finn – who just minutes before had been considered in a prime starting position for the race having qualified on a fuel-adjusted pole – was then relegated to seventh after the similarly Mercedes-powered Force India of Tonio Liuzzi astonishingly just plain outdrove him down the backstraight.
But while the second McLaren driver's afternoon had unravelled already, his race-leading team-mate had immediately got on with trying to build the kind of lead he needed to make his two-stopping strategy work.
Hamilton had pulled 2.1s clear of Raikkonen by the end of lap three, with a string of fastest laps ensuring his advantage was up to 3.5s three laps later, while Sutil in turn continued to run close behind the Ferrari in third.
The one-stopping Brawns, meanwhile, were generally lapping around a second off the pace in fourth and fifth, the pair told over the radio on lap eight that they needed to lap within 0.9s of the race-leading McLaren to make their strategy work.
Barrichello duly responded, the Brazilian – whose one stop would come one lap later than his team-mate’s – at this stage just over a second clear of title rival Button and beginning to eek further ahead.
On lap 14, Hamilton peeled into the pit lane for his first stop with a 6.8s lead over Raikkonen, while the Brawn duo were 17s and 20.5s respectively adrift.
After Sutil on lap 16, and then Raikkonen a lap later, pitted and returned in the same order behind Hamilton, the Brawns were promoted to the lead and knew they really needed to turn up the wick as their heavy starting fuel loads burned off.
The next dozen laps couldn’t have gone any better for the championship-leading outfit.
Appearing to push each other to the car’s limits around the challenging high-speed circuit, Barrichello and Button began to set near identical times with their pace proving too strong for the now heavier Hamilton behind.
In truth, Button was invariably a fraction faster and managed to close his once 3.5s deficit to Barrichello to 2.1s by the time of his one and only stop at the end of lap 27.
Nevertheless, Barrichello still emerged from his own pit stop a lap later with his advantage increased once more after enjoying a slightly quicker service and a better in-lap.
With the veteran Brazilian now truly in the box seat to take the victory should Brawn’s one-stopping plan work, all attention turned to whether Hamilton, now back in the lead, could build a big enough advantage to hold his advantage through his extra stop.
The challenge was simply too great.
As it turned out, Hamilton only had five more laps before his stop and his 17s lead over Barrichello was no where near enough to rejoin either ahead of, or between, the two Brawns – the Briton re-merging with the pair in sight, but realistically out of reach.
Nevertheless, never one to give up easily, the McLaren driver set about closing down second-placed Button over the remaining 20 laps, getting the gap down to under two seconds with just a couple of laps to go.
But in the end the world champion’s renowned racer’s instinct would cost him what would have been just his third podium finish of the season.
Having just set the fastest time through the first sector on the last lap, he then lost the back-end of his car going over the kerb on the exit of the first Lesmo which caused him to lose control and slam nose-first into the inside wall.
The accident littered debris all over the circuit and meant the safety car was called.
The Brawns were therefore afforded the luxury of cruising around the remainder of the final lap, Barrichello leading home Button for his third Monza win and the team’s fourth 1-2 of the season.
Hamilton’s crash also ended Sutil’s late hopes of finally overhauling Raikkonen, the German having already lost his best chance of jumping the Finn when they had pitted together for the final time on lap 38.
Raikkonen had appeared set to lose the position when a hesitant lollipop man put his lollipop up, down, and then up again as the pit stop came to its conclusion, the confusion causing his driver to make a stuttering exit.
However, Sutil was suffering his own dramas further down the pit lane, the Force India man hitting one mechanic with his front wheel and knocking another over after slaloming into his pit box – the lost time meaning Raikkonen still got out ahead to claim the fortunate podium spot.
Fernando Alonso was another to benefit from Hamilton's demise, the Spaniard's promotion to fifth equalling Renault’s best result of the season following a largely lonely afternoon.
He had made little headway from eighth off the line despite now having KERS, but passed the struggling Kovalainen soon afterwards before racing typically consistently on his one-stop fuel load.
Kovalainen eventually finished on his tail in sixth, while Nick Heidfeld produced one of the drives of the day to take a well-deserved seventh from 15th on the grid following BMW’s engine problems in qualifying.
Red Bull inherited the final point with Vettel, but given Brawn’s resounding 1-2, that was little comfort for the Milton Keynes-based outfit.
After initially making a steady start from ninth, Vettel quickly lost ground and didn't have the speed to respond, the German lucky to finish at all after a wild ride across the gravel at the second Lesmo corner in the closing stint.
On a mixed day for the home Italian crowd, Fisichella just missed out on points on his Ferrari debut after a solid drive from 14th while Liuzzi, the man who replaced him at Force India, suffered a disappointing end to his excellent first weekend back in an F1 race seat when his gearbox packed up on lap 23.
Italian Grand Prix result (53 laps)
1. BARRICHELLO Brawn 1h16m21.706s
2. BUTTON Brawn +2.8s
3. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +30.6s
4. SUTIL Force India +31.1s
5. ALONSO Renault +50.1s
6. KOVALAINEN McLaren +60.6s
7. HEIDFELD BMW +82.4s
8. VETTEL Red Bull +85.4s
9. FISICHELLA Ferrari +86.8s
10. NAKAJIMA Williams +120.0s
11. GLOCK Toyota +163.9s
12. HAMILTON McLaren +1 lap
13. BUEMI Toro Rosso +1 lap
14. TRULLI Toyota +1 lap
15. GROSJEAN Renault +1 lap
16. ROSBERG Williams +2 laps
R. LIUZZI Force India +30 laps
R. ALGUERSUARI Toro Rosso +33 laps
R. KUBICA BMW +37 laps
R. WEBBER Red Bull +53 laps
Fastest lap: SUTIL 1m24.739s
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