2012 Australian GP: Button wins, Safety Car helps Vettel

Jenson Button won the 2012 Australian GP at Albert Park ahead of Sebastian Vettel and his McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton. The race was decided at the first corner: starting second on the grid, Button got away better than Hamilton on pole and kept the lead all the way to the flag, apart from the pit stops. A Safety Car came out late in the race, and Vettel was the one who gained most from it. It allowed him to slot in between the two McLarens.

Hamilton had taken pole position, but Button was quicker off the line and turned into Turn 1 first. He then quickly built a lead of around three seconds. Behind them, Mercedes surprised everyone with strong starts: Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg ran third and fourth. Starting third on the grid, Romain Grosjean made a poor start for Lotus F1 and dropped to sixth on the opening lap. Mark Webber got away badly because his clutch bit too hard (according to grandprix.com).

Things got tight at the first corner. Webber was squeezed between Jean-Éric Vergne and Nico Hülkenberg. For Hülkenberg and Force India, the race was over before he had even completed a lap. Bruno Senna and Daniel Ricciardo also made contact, and both had to pit at the end of the first lap. At Sauber, Sergio Pérez ran into the rear wing of his team-mate Kamui Kobayashi. Kobayashi carried on with a damaged wing (according to Wikipedia).

Grosjean's strong weekend came to an end on lap 2. He collided with Pastor Maldonado at Turn 13 and broke a front-right track rod, which forced him to retire. Shortly afterwards, Vettel passed Rosberg for fourth.

Vettel was stuck behind Schumacher in the early stages. After ten laps the problem went away, though not because of an overtake: Schumacher retired with a gearbox failure. Before he retired, he had run across the Turn 1 run-off area. Vettel was now third, but according to Autosport he was around twelve seconds behind the two McLarens.

The first round of stops decided the battle between the McLaren drivers. Button pitted from the lead on lap 16, while Hamilton led for one lap and stopped a lap later. It didn't pay off: Hamilton had been struggling with fading tyres before his stop and rejoined behind Pérez, who was running a long first stint on the harder tyres. Kimi Räikkönen also stayed out for a long time and was even running second before his first stop on lap 19. Pérez had taken a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change and started 22nd on the grid. He was one of the few drivers to go for a single pit stop and didn't come in until lap 24. According to grandprix.com, Button's lead had grown to around ten seconds by half-distance.

The moment that decided the podium came during the second round of stops. Vitaly Petrov stopped his Caterham on the start/finish straight after 34 laps with a steering failure. According to Wikipedia and grandprix.com, the Safety Car was then deployed on lap 37 so his car could be recovered.

The timing was bad for McLaren. Button and Hamilton had both already stopped on lap 36, but Vettel had not. He led for one lap, then pitted under the Safety Car on lap 37 and rejoined between Button and Hamilton. Webber also stopped during this phase and, according to Autosport, came back out ahead of Fernando Alonso.

Button's comfortable lead had disappeared, but he pulled away from Vettel again after the restart. At the flag the gap between them was 2.139 seconds (according to Autosport). Hamilton couldn't find a way past Vettel in the closing laps. After the race, Vettel admitted that Button had been “simply too quick” on the day (quoted by grandprix.com). It was still a strong start to the season for the Red Bull world champion, who went from sixth on the grid to second.

After the restart, Maldonado kept Alonso's Ferrari under pressure for a long time in the fight for fifth. On the final lap his Williams was unsettled by a kerb and hit the wall hard. Maldonado was unhurt and was classified thirteenth because he had completed 57 laps. According to grandprix.com, he said afterwards that he had no longer planned to attack Alonso and had already settled for sixth.

Further back, the last lap was chaotic. Rosberg attacked Pérez for seventh, and the two touched before the fast chicane (Turns 11 and 12). Rosberg got a puncture and dropped to twelfth. Kobayashi and Räikkönen both got past Pérez. Vergne made a mistake towards the end of the lap, so Ricciardo and Paul di Resta also got past him. According to Wikipedia, eighth to eleventh place were covered by less than 0.4 seconds.

The other retirements at a glance:

• Nico Hülkenberg (Force India): first-corner collision, no lap completed
• Romain Grosjean (Lotus F1): collision with Maldonado, after 1 lap
• Michael Schumacher (Mercedes): gearbox, after 10 laps
• Vitaly Petrov (Caterham): steering, after 34 laps
• Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham): suspension, after 38 laps
• Felipe Massa (Ferrari): collision with Senna, after 46 laps
• Bruno Senna (Williams): damage from the same collision, after 52 laps, classified 16th

Felipe Massa struggled with pace and tyre wear all race and had dropped to 13th after three stops before he collided with Senna. According to Wikipedia, Heikki Kovalainen received a five-place grid penalty for the next race in Malaysia for an illegal overtake during a Safety Car period. The HRT team, with Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan, had failed to make the 107 per cent cut-off in qualifying and was not allowed to start.

Winners:

• Sergio Pérez made up the most places. His one-stop strategy took him from 22nd on the grid to eighth, a gain of 14 positions.
• Kimi Räikkönen went from 17th on the grid to seventh on his return to Formula 1, a gain of ten places.
• Kamui Kobayashi finished sixth despite a damaged rear wing. With 12 points, Sauber were third in the constructors' standings after the race.
• Fernando Alonso went from twelfth on the grid to fifth after Ferrari had struggled in qualifying.
• Daniel Ricciardo scored his first championship points by finishing ninth at his first home race (according to Autosport and grandprix.com).
• Mark Webber finished fourth. According to Wikipedia, it was his best result at his home Grand Prix.

Losers:

• Romain Grosjean lost 18 places: he started third on the grid and was out after the first lap.
• Michael Schumacher retired with a gearbox failure after starting fourth on the grid and running third early on.
• Nico Rosberg dropped from eighth to twelfth on the final lap and came away with nothing, which left Mercedes without points.
• Lewis Hamilton lost two places from pole position, the first at the start and the second because of the Safety Car.

After the first race, Button led the 2012 drivers' championship with 25 points, ahead of Vettel (18), Hamilton (15), Webber (12) and Alonso (10). In the constructors' standings, McLaren led with 40 points from Red Bull (30), Sauber (12) and Ferrari (10).

According to Wikipedia, it was Button's third win at Albert Park in four years. Hamilton and Button made up the first all-British front row since the 1995 Australian GP. For a season opener, the race showed a clear pecking order: McLaren had the fastest package in Melbourne, with Red Bull close behind. Ferrari had a lot of work ahead of them, and Alonso's fifth place came mainly from his recovery drive. Next on the calendar was the Malaysian GP. You can find all the times and data on our 2012 Australian GP race page.