On Saturday Kimi Raikkonen held provisional pole in the last minute of qualifying, but Button sneaked it back almost immediately by 0.025 of a second, with birthday boy Barrichello and Vettel slotting into 3rd and 4th place respectively. Webber was frustrated at his performance in Q3 and could have been further up the order, but this was nothing compared to the shocking afternoon that BMW and Toyota were having, with these two pairs being the worst performing cars in qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton suffered the indignity of being stuck in 15th position after damage to his car in Q1 which worsened when Sebastien Buemi in the Toro Rosso went quicker and punted him down one more place and out of the first part of qualifying. A precautionary overnight gearbox change saw Hamilton starting from the very back of the grid.

Felipe Massa found it hard to win from pole position last year, only managing 3rd place in the race. Could Jenson Button do better this year.?

At the start Button got away well and retained the inside line for the first corner, team mate Rubens managed to get the jump on the 2nd placed Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen (equipped with KERS, but it doesn’t operate until the car reaches 100 km/h, so no use for starting the race) and by the end of lap 1 the Brawns had 1.5 seconds of clear air between them and the nearest Ferrari of Raikkonen. Hamilton had been started light in foolish hope of scything his way through the field. Even his opening lap was far from stellar and he only managed to move up one place at the wrong end of the pack.

By the 3rd and 4th laps, Barrichello and Button were trading fastest times, and by lap 7 Massa was being held up by Vettel, even though the Red Bull had the soft pliable tyres on. Vettel had to defend his position going through the chicane but the Ferrari driver was getting increasingly frustrated and on the next lap again made his move coming out of the tunnel, but overshot the chicane this time. Massa correctly gave the German the place back but was caught by surprise as Rosberg also sneaked through into 5th place.

Elsewhere on the circuit Piquet was being shunted off by the careering Toro Rosso of Buemi who had misjudged the braking and became well entangled under his rear wing, Piquet rejoined the track but not for long and shortly retired into the garage with rear end damage.

Vettel had to pit on lap 10 as the soft compound tyres had obviously lost their advantage as Rosberg, Massa and Kovalainen had moved ahead of him. (maybe the wrong combination of a double diffuser and super-soft rubber?).

The Scuderia decided to keep Felipe out for at least another 10 laps on the harder tyres. Quite a few teams elected to run the first short stint on the soft ones, but found they were causing grip problems sooner than expected. Worryingly for Barrichello his rears were starting to give up due to graining by lap 14 and the rival teams were busy on the radio spreading the good news. Raikkonen is catching him by around 2 seconds a lap and blinks first to swap like-for-like hard tyres in the pits, while Rubens wallows around for yet another lap.

Button is driving super smooth and is looking after his tyres better than his team mate but also experiences oversteer and gets the call to change them by lap 17. Vettel is out of the race after understeering his Red Bull into a china shop (sorry I mean tyre wall) at Sainte Devote. Button rejoins the race in front of Massa and is blatantly holding the Brazilian up until the new tyres have come up to operating temperature.

There was encouraging pace from the Ferraris in the mid point of the race, but they still had the unpopular softer green striped tyres to use before the end of the day. Massa was receiving repeated warnings about his excessive use of the kerbs and advised not to cut the chicanes by the Stewards. (picture Charlie Whiting wagging his finger if you can..!) but he still takes to the air one more time to push his luck. Maybe Raikkonen knew the officials were being lenient today, so decided to join in too.

Jenson is consistently setting laps of 1minute 15.2 seconds (his qualifying time was 1:14.9) and pits from the lead on lap 51 but exits the pitlane as a full speed Kimi Raikkonen comes through the finish straight, and unable to fend off the flying Ferrari slots into a Scuderia sandwich with Massa now in his mirrors.

The best placed McLaren of Kovalainen also tried bumping over a kerb after a late entry at the swimming pool, but lost the back end on landing and wiped the nose of his car on the Armco. Not a good day for McLaren. We all hoped this would be a race without a safety car, and thanks to the animated and well drilled marshals it stayed firmly in the garage.
Jenson was only briefly sat behind Raikkonen as the Finn was going to have to stop again and so it was really just academic. Raikkonen re-emerged in third from his last stop despite a problem with a sticking right rear wheel.

Button assumed the lead yet again, now firmly ahead of Barrichello by 13 seconds,
Massa’s pace was short-lived as the Ferrari had pitted for the dreaded soft compounds, and rejoined in 4th place only 1 ½ seconds behind Kimi. Webber could also come into the frame, hunting down the Ferrari’s who were now losing out on performance, but he was running out of laps with only 7 remaining.

The closing laps ticked away with the same order, Button cruised for home, only worrying in case mechanical failure robbed him of the win, easing off the throttle to save the car, avoiding catching back markers and risking any unnecessary overtaking moves.

There was no real drama left in the remainder of the race, except for a disaster for Nakajima as he ran out of road at Mirabeau from a non scoring points position. The Brawn team took the flag and Ross congratulated Jenson for driving the whole weekend with real finesse, while Rubens was praised for keeping Raikkonen at bay and bringing home maximum points for the team from Brackley.

Button still looked fresh faced as he collected the trophy in the royal box (even after jogging the length of the pitlane), 2nd placed Barrichello also portrayed a happy chappie, but a flustered looking Raikkonen made up the podium scene and couldn’t disguise his disappointment of finishing that low down the order when the red cars were at long last beginning to perform satisfactorily.

Another Brilliant one-two for Brawn, and a reasonable three-four for the Tifosi to celebrate as their best result of the season so far. Could this be the turning point for Ferrari...?

Summary

• This result gives Jenson Button 5 race wins out of 6.
• This was Brawn GP's third 1-2 and second in a row.
• After a late charge, Webber finished only 0.6 of a second behind 4th placed Massa.
• Fastest lap of the race was Felipe Massa 1:15.154, an average speed of 159.991 km/h
• Button has led 3 times more laps than any other driver this year. He lapped Lewis Hamilton before the halfway point of the race.
• Pre-tax profits at Virgin Atlantic rocketed to £68.4 million, thanks partly to Richard Branston keeping his hands in his pocket instead of expanding his sponsorship on the Brawn cars
• Parking in Monaco is hard to find and so expensive that race winner Jenson Button had to use the Park-and-Ride to get to the podium (but then realised that buses don’t run on Sundays).
• Only at the Monaco Grand Prix would Formula 1 team bosses meet to talk about cutting costs on board a £32 million super-yacht.
• Quote of the day ; Robert Kubica (BMW) “We have to realise we are bad..!
  

Stefano Domenicali

“The most important thing to come out of today is the confirmation that our car is back to being competitive, thanks to the great amount of work that everyone at the Scuderia, both back home and at the track, has put in over these past few weeks, without getting distracted by everything going on around us. It's not easy to work in these conditions and I want to thank everyone for what they are doing. Today, we got a third and a fourth place which, given the difficult start to our season, is a nice result, but it’s still not the one we want. Our aim is to be ahead of everyone and we will do all we can to achieve that as soon as possible. Of course the others won’t remain idle but we must continue to push as we have done in these recent times.”

Felipe Massa

"It’s a real shame to have lost two places in the final stages, even if we’ve finally made it to the scoreboard. We knew we couldn’t match the pace of the Brawns but we had managed to get ahead of the Red Bulls and, but for the fuel problem, I could have certainly stayed ahead of Vettel and Alonso. The final part of the race was a pain. I was already struggling on the harder tyres and then I had to try and save fuel as much as possible, while at the same time staying ahead of Vettel. Then the team told that if I wanted to make it to the finish, I would have to let Vettel by and slow down a lot: if I had made another pit stop I would have finished out of the points. Today, the car’s pace on the softer tyre was reasonably good, even if we’re still lacking a few tenths, but at least we are back to fighting for the top places.”

Kimi Raikkonen

“I am very happy with today’s performance. The car was very competitive: it’s clear we are on the way up and hopefully we can soon be back to fighting for the win. At the start, I lost a lot of time behind Vettel and then, because I made a mistake, I was also passed by Rosberg. But after that I quickly got back up the order and I think I could also have passed Kimi. In the three laps I had longer than him, at the second pit stop, I found myself right behind Button and so I wasn’t able to exploit the opportunity. Starting on the hard tyres was the best choice: we still lack a bit of aerodynamic downforce to be up with the Brawns, but it is too early to claim to be the second best team in the championship. What is sure is that we are working well and I am sure we will see further results of that soon.”