Rubens Barrichello Captures the European Grand Prix and his First F1 Victory

It seems that it was a long time coming for Rubens Barrichello and it must have seemed even longer to him. The Brawn GP driver was able to capture his first ever F1 victory, after being in the division for 5 years, this weekend as he captured the checkered flag at the European Grand Prix. While it didn’t appear that the victory would go to Barrichello all day long, the experienced driver took advantage of a big mistake by the McLaren team and brought about his 10^th career win but first since the Chinese GP in 2004.

The McLaren team called for a pit stop and made a very costly error which allowed Barrichello to overtake Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton managed to finish second even with the mistake just barely beating out Kimi Raiknenko of Ferrari even though he was the holder of the pole position. Maybe the biggest news on the day was Jenson Button’s 7^th place finish which lowered his overall points lead to just 18 after a fast start to the season. Barrichello, his teammate, is the racer that is following him the closest for the championship. Mark Webber ended up finishing in 9^th place and sits 20.5 points back of Button overall.

Lewis Hamilton looked to be cruising to his second straight title after winning the Hungarian Grand Prix but his mechanics had major problems when removing his tire warmers during the last pit stop. Overall the stop lasted just under 14 seconds and gave him far too much time to try and make up. In the end Barrichello won by just 2.3 seconds which would not have happened without the pit stop problem.

Barrichello dedicated his win to Felipe Massa who is still undergoing tests after his horrific accident and eventual brain surgery. It was a piece of Barrichello’s car that came off and hit Massa in the race and Rubens has not stopped discussing his remorse and how bad he feels since the incident happened.