A disappointing race return to Luca Badoer. Hope Ferrari get a quick guy in as soon as possible. Apart from Luca,
this race also featured many other newbies/rookies (Romain Grosjean, Jaime Alguersuari).

The championship leader Jenson Button struggled for the fourth race
in a row, but this time he was lucky not to lose points to Red Bull drivers. His Red Bull rivals Mark Webber and Sebastian
Vettel failed to capitalise and Jenson’s difficulties. Webber just finished out of points, and Vettel had an engine failure
(two Renault engine failures for him this weekend). Jenson managed to finish 7th to score 2 points. Interestingly,
with a 10 point haul, Rubens moved from 4th to 2nd in the standings and is now 18 points behind Jenson. Now all
it takes is a DNF by Jenson, and Rubens is back in the game. Jenson scored for the 11th consecutive race this season.

For the first time this season, 11 drivers fell out of title contention,
purely going by mathematics. These drivers include three mid-season debutants (Jaime, Luca, Grosjean) though.
The most notable amongst these are the two BMW drivers Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld. This sums up the miserable
season of BMW.

Also out of the constructors title hunt are the teams Renault, BMW Sauber,
STR-Ferrari and Force India.

Thanks to two great results from Lewis Hamilton (a win in Hungary and
2nd in Valencia), McLaren have managed to leapfrog Toyota and move up to fourth in constructors standings, and are
very close to catching Ferrari for third place. While Kimi managed two podium finishes in last two races, Ferrari need a
good second driver, if they want to keep hold of third place in constructors standings.

The F1 grid is slowly getting rid of the old timers and fresh blood is coming in. At the same time Rossi is not getting any younger. To compete at the top in F1, age does matter! I don’t want Rossi to switch to F1, do badly for an year and disappear off the grid.

If he is looking for a new challenge though, I have a proposal for him. Even though he hasn’t got much left to prove in MotoGP, there’s always something

He already won championships riding a Honda and a Yamaha. Wouldn’t it be fantastic, if he won another wolrd championship on a Ducati? Yes, Ducati!.

I urge him to switch to Ducati, to partner Casey Stoner. So far, Casey has been the only rider to do well on that bike, and all his team mates struggled massively. It’ll be a dream come true for many of his fans, if Rossi switches to Ducati, beats Casey Stoner and takes the championship! It’ll be one hell of a season between Casey and Rossi.

Not to forget  Ducati is an Italian team too!

 - Mark Webber scored his first F1 victory after being in F1 for 8 years. He managed the victory after serving a drive through penalty for running into Rubens Barrichello at the first corner. This race also marked Mark’s first pole position.

- For the second race in a row (first one being Silverstone), Red Bull have scored a dominant 1-2 finish, there by maximising the constructors points haul and closing the gap to Brawn team by 11 points. All three Red Bull victories this season have been 1-2 finishes.

- This is also the second race in a row for Jenson to finish outside of podium.

- For the first time this season, Mark Webber outqualified his team mate Sebastian Vettel.

- Jenson Button again got outqualified by his team mate Rubens Barrichello, but finished ahead of Rubens in the race.

- Filipe Massa scored his first podium (third place) of the season for Scuderia Ferrari, while his team mate Kimi Raikkonen did not finish the race.

- Fernando Alonso recorded the fastest race lap for the first time this season, for Renault. He also got outqualified by his team mate Nelso Piquet Junior for the first time this season, in the tricky and wet qualifying session. Fernando spun and blew his chances of getting into Q3.

- Adrian Sutil of Force India recorded the first Q3 entry for the team, as he qualified 7th.

- In the drivers standings Filipe Massa jumped from 6th to 5th ahead of Jarno Trulli. Rubens Barrichello droped from second to fourth after being overtaken by both Red Bull drivers.

- Jenson Button still continues to be the only driver to have scored points in all races so far this season.

Constructors’ Standings 2009:

Drivers Standings 2009:

Engine Supplier Standings 2009:

Total Wins by Driver (Out of 9 Races):

Total Pole Positions by Driver (Out of 9
Races):

Total Podiums By Driver (Out of 9 Races):

Total Fastest Race Laps by Driver (Out of 9
Races):

Drivers’ Average Qualifying Position and
Average Starting Grid Position:

Drivers’ Average Race Finishing Position:

Total Points Finishes by Driver (Out of 9
Races):

Total DNFs and Disqualifications per Driver:

Team Mate Battles – Head to Head in
Qualifying:

Team Mate Battles – Head to Head in Races:

So far this season, I used an Excel spreadsheet to store data and produces these statistics. To gain more control over the data and to come up with precise figures, I have moved this data now into an SQL Server database. Hope you’ll like the results I am now differentiating between actual qualifying position and starting grid positions. Information is now available on drivers’ DNFs and disqualifications. Engine supplier standings are also provided.

Some highlights of the British Grand Prix 2009:

• This is the first race of the 2009 season, where Jenson Button is not on the podium
• This is also the first race of the 2009 season, where Rubens Barrichello finished better than his Brawn GP team mate, Jenson Button
• In Constructors standings, Red Bull have closed the gap to Brawn GP by a massive 9 points. But Brawn GP still have three times the points of third placed Toyota
• Williams have leapfrogged McLaren-Mercedes in the Constructors’ standings to 5th position
• Sebastian Vettel is now just two points behind second placed Rubens Barrichello in the Drivers’ standings. He also recorded his first fastest lap of the race this season.
• For the first time this season, Nelson Piquet Junior has finished the race ahead of his double world champion team mate Fernando Alonso
• Heikki Kovalainen continues to struggle, as he registers his 5th DNF from 8 races, while his team mate and current world champion Lewis Hamilton struggles home in a lowly 16th and a lap down
• Though not significant for the championship, Filipe Massa of Ferrari jumps ahead of Timo Glock and Nico Rosberg in the Drivers’ standings
• Kazuki Nakajima of Williams, for the first time this season, outqualified his team mate Nico Rosberg. But Nico got the better of Kazuki in the race

I will leave you to enjoy the stats now. In case of any questions, leave a comment and I will respond.

Constructors’ Standings 2009:

Drivers’ Standings 2009:

Engine Supplier Standings 2009:

Total Wins by Driver (Out of 8 Races):

Total Pole Positions by Driver (Out of 8 Races):

Total Fastest Race Laps (Out of 8 Races):

Drivers’ Average Qualifying and Starting Grid Positions:

Drivers’ Average Race Finishing Positions:

Total and Average Positions Gained or Lost by Drivers:
These figures only compare actual race finishing positions with actual qualifying positions and do not take into account any grid penalties,
disqualifications or other penalties. A DNF is treated as P20.
Places gained is inclusive of overtakes as well as retirements (of other drivers ahead)

Total and Average Positions Gained or Lost by Drivers:
This is the same as above table, except that it compares qualifying and race finishing positions, after taking into account any
grid position changes due to own other other drivers’ penalties and disqualifications. A DNF is treated as P20.

Total Points Finishes by Driver:

Total DNFs and Disqualifications per Driver:

Team Mate Battles – Head to Head in
Qualifying:

Team Mate Battles – Head to Head in Race:

Here are a few highlights of the race, followed by some interesting statistics and analysis:

• Jenson Button is the only driver to have finished in points, in all seven races of the season
• Jenson Button has won 6 out of the 7 races so far this season, and this is his 4th win in a row. He is also only the 5th driver in Formula 1 history to have won 6 races of the opening 7 races of a season. The other four drivers being Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark and Michael Schumacher, who all went on to win that championship
• This is Jenson Button’s second win of the season, where he did not start on pole
• Jenson Button broke the ‘Pole sitter wins the race’ trend at Istanbul, as this is the first time in the circuit’s history where a non-pole sitter won the race. This also brings Filipe Massa’s (Ferrari) 3 race winning streak at Istanbul to an end
• Jenson Button now has more than double the points of the nearest non-Brawn GP driver (Sebastian Vettel’s 29 opposed to Jenson’s 61 points)
• Robert Kubica of BMW-Sauber has scored his first points, in the 7th race of the season
• This is Jenson’s second win of the season where he also set the fastest race lap
• Brawn GP have recorded their first retirement of the season

Constructors Standings

Mathematically, all constructors are still in
with a chance  of winning the constructors title (10 more races remaining)

Drivers Standings

Mathematically, all drivers are still in with
a chance of winning the "Word Drivers Championship – WDC" (10 more races
remaining)

Race Wins by Drivers (out of 7
races)

Pole Positions by Driver
(out of 7 races)

Fastest Race Laps by Driver (out of
7 races)

Total Number of Places Gained or Lost by
Drivers Over the Season

For the above calculations, any DNFs are
treated as 20th race finishing position (P20)
Net places gained is inclusive of overtakes as well as retirements (of other
drivers ahead)
 

Average Number of Places Gained or Lost by
Drivers Over the Season

For the above calculations, any DNFs are
treated as 20th race finishing position (P20)
Net places gained is inclusive of overtakes as well as retirements (of other
drivers ahead)

Average Race Starting Position of Drivers
Over the Season

Average Race Finishing Position of Drivers
Over the Season

Total Number of Points Finishes by Drivers

Team Mates Head to Head in Qualifying (Race
Starting Position)

Team Mates Head to Head in Race (Race
Finishing Position)

We bought our tickets directly from the Silverstone website. We bought these tickets around an year ago, immediately after the 2008 British Grand Prix.

This year, we have tickets for all three days (Friday free practice, Saturday practice and qualifying, and Sunday’s race). I’ll be sitting with four of my work colleagues in covered Platinum Grandstand Luffield A.

Luffield A provides a great view of the cars for longer duration of the lap, as it covers some of the slow corners and fast straights. Great for photography as well. The main advantage with Luffield A is that it is covered and there’s no problem even if it rains hard. In 2008, I was glad I sat in Luffield A, as it rained quite badly on Sunday.

There’s also a giant TV screen close to Luffield A. So it’s very easy to follow what’s going on in the race. I’ll have my mobile phone and headphones ready to tune into the live race coverage on Silverstone FM. Last year the commentary was great and it was easy to follow. Combined with the giant TV screen and FM commentary it was a lot more easier to follow the race than I had imagined.