Formula 1 Blog - BBC Top Gear

The year in pictures

Jamie Hibbard — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:20:49 GMT

This is just a quick note to say that BBC Sport has put together a brilliant F1 season review entitled The Year in Pictures, which takes a look back over the highs and lows of 2009. In his foreword, BBC commentator Martin Brundle says: “Formula One’s return to BBC television served up a sensational and thoroughly [...]

Ballsy Brawn

Jamie Hibbard — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:48:54 GMT

BBC Sport’s Ted Kravitz always comes up with some great insider type blogs, and his latest episode post-Abu Dhabi is more of the same. This time he reveals something that I certainly had never heard before, and that’s regarding a ballsy move taken by Brawn GP boss Ross after Jenson Button’s sixth win of the year. Ross [...]

Toyota pulls out

Jamie Hibbard — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:00:04 GMT

Toyota has this morning announced that it is pulling out of F1 with immediate effect. It cites the global economic downturn as the reason for the withdrawal, after posting the company’s first ever operating loss back in March. It comes as something of a shock, but not really a surprise, as there had been speculation since that [...]

Rubens to Williams

Jamie Hibbard — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:35:55 GMT

News reaches us this morning that’s about as surprising as the clocks going back, that we didn’t have a proper UK summer and that Fernando Alonso is driving for Ferrari next year: Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg are in at Williams. OK, so it’s a bit more surprising than those other three things, but it’s been [...]

Abu Dhabi do

Jamie Hibbard — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:25:23 GMT

The first ever Abu Dhabi GP didn’t really live up to all of the off-track bluster once the race actually got going, until about two laps to go when Jenson Button got close enough to second place man Mark Webber for a bit of an on-the-edge ding-dong. Jenson had been closing Mark down for quite a [...]

Lewis poles in

Jamie Hibbard — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:02:07 GMT

Well it wasn’t the all-British front row that we’d hope for, but McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton stuck his car on pole position for the inaugural Abu Dhabi GP, the last race of the year. Incoming world champion Jenson Button had been hinting at his intent to go out on a flyer during practice yesterday, but it turned [...]

Hamilton vs Button

Jamie Hibbard — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:04:26 GMT

Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton traded places at the front during the first practice session at the inaugural Abu Dhabi GP this morning, and it was good. The incoming and outgoing World Champions made a fine show of it, and if their dueling was anything to go by, then Sunday’s race should be a gloves-off cracker. The [...]

Nico’s off

Jamie Hibbard — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:06:58 GMT

Ahead of this weekend’s Abu Dhabi GP, Nico Rosberg has announced that it will be his last race with Williams. Rosberg has spent his whole F1 career with the team, and has said that this weekend will be strange because of it. It’s widely expected that he will be off to Brawn – a straight swap with [...]

Button to Brawn?

Jamie Hibbard — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:21:17 GMT

Here’s an interesting piece of rumour mongering for a Friday afternoon: Jenson Button being looked at for a McLaren drive. Now firstly, there’s no concrete proof of this from either side. McLaren have said they’re in talks with a number of high-profile drivers and, obviously, they want the best guy they can get to partner Lewis [...]

Jenson: it’s all glam now

Jamie Hibbard — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:23:57 GMT

Jenson Button is currently holed up on a bus in a freezing car park at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. It’s not somewhere you’d want to be, having just won your first-ever World Drivers’ Championship. As you’re no doubt well aware – 40% of you said that, in his position, you’d be drunk on a [...]

One up on Jenson

Bill Thomas — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:47:53 GMT

OK, so Jenson’s the F1 world champion and he’s The Man right now, but I’ve got one over him: I’ve driven Yas Marina circuit and he hasn’t. So there. Yeah. I was lucky enough to be invited to the circuit to have a look round and take a Nissan GT-R on a lap or two. And [...]

It’s a team thing

Jamie Hibbard — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:52:51 GMT

Watching Jenson Button climb from the BGP001 in parc fermé after the Brazilian GP on Sunday, I couldn’t help but think about the glaring contrast between Jenson’s 2008 season compared to this. Last year, as Jenson clambered out of his Honda, which he’d managed to drag home in a lowly 17th place, his car was on [...]

A very British win

Jamie Hibbard — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:34:32 GMT

What a great result for British sport at Interlagos on Sunday. Don’t forget that Brawn, which was Honda last year and almost disappeared altogether over Christmas, is a British-owned team, staffed by British people almost exclusively. It’s named after a British boss, piloted by a British driver, looked after by a British pit crew, designed by [...]

Poll: What would you do?

Jamie Hibbard — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:28:42 GMT

There’s many things you’d think that would be running through Jenson Button’s head at the moment, and we want to know how you’d spend your time as the new king of Formula 1, so vote below in our handy poll…

Jenson across the net

Jamie Hibbard — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:09:49 GMT

This morning, as the idea of Jenson Button being world champion sinks in, it feels like everyone in Britain is a Formula One fan, which frankly can only be a good thing. But there’s so much Jenson stuff all over the interweb, that we thought you might like a helping hand with where to go for [...]

Button is king!

Jamie Hibbard — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:34:56 GMT

They said that Jenson Button would, at best, limp to the World Drivers’ Championship title at the next race in Abu Dhabi, but he proved the critics wrong with a breathtaking drive at the Brazilian GP. With some stunning overtakes early on in the race, it was clear Button wanted to take the title home with [...]

Pain in the rain

Jamie Hibbard — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:01:12 GMT

Jenson Button will have been watching the last part of qualifying for the Brazilian GP from behind his hands, hoping that teammate and title rival Rubens Barrichello wouldn’t get too high up on the grid. But sadly for Jenson, Rubens played Q3 perfectly and stuck himself on pole in front of his home crowd, a long [...]

Boys from Brazil

Jamie Hibbard — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:19:21 GMT

If today’s first practice at the Brazilian GP is anything to go by, then this weekend’s race could prove to be nearly as manic as last year’s. Rain, crashes, red flags, and multiple telly shots of Felipe Massa returning to F1’s inner sanctum for the first time since his accident in Hungary, it was the most [...]

WDC for JB?

Jamie Hibbard — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:10:55 GMT

This weekend is the big one. Or at least, this weekend could be the big one. Will Brawn GP’s Jenson Button be World Drivers’ Champion come Sunday night? We talked about the maths involved last week, so now you need to shelve the statistical possibilities and go with your heart instead. As much as I have a [...]

Go! Go! Gone!

Dan Read — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:31:43 GMT

Our mate over at BBC Sport, F1 telly front-man Jake Humphrey, came over a bit crashey at the weekend. We like Jake, especially when he’s playing ringmaster in the Coulthard and Eddie show, so we felt a bit sorry for him when we heard he’d dented an Elise. On his race debut. He was in one of [...]

Bernard’s medals

Jamie Hibbard — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:30:04 GMT

Interestingly, if Bernie Ecclestone’s plan of awarding gold medals to race winners had been in place this season, Jenson Button would have wrapped the Championship up after the Singapore GP the other week. Bernie wanted to reward first places with gold medals, seconds with silvers, and so on – like at the Olympics – to work [...]

Kubica in at Renault

Jamie Hibbard — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:15:30 GMT

Like we speculated a few weeks ago, Fernando Alonso’s move to Ferrari in 2010 has well and truly kicked off the silly season, with Robert Kubica now being confirmed to replace the Spaniard at Renault. The French outfit admitted to having kept an eye on Kubica since his grand prix debut in 2006, and regard him [...]

Tight at the top

Jamie Hibbard — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:02:34 GMT

It must be getting tricky at Brawn GP’s HQ right now, what with their two drivers being at the sharp end of the World Drivers’ Championship fight, 14 points apart. Certainly, if you’d have told team boss Ross Brawn at the beginning of the season that his team would be on course for both the WDC [...]

Japan: Vettel stays in the hunt

Sam Philip — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:41:05 GMT

Jenson Button failed to secure the world championship in Suzuka as Sebastian Vettel recorded a dominant victory to put him right back in the title hunt. Vettel led from start to finish, but Button will be happy to head to Brazil having conceded just one point to main rival Rubens Barrichello. Button eventually finished eighth, grabbing a [...]

Japan: Vettel keeps pressure on Button

Sam Philip — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 07:31:10 GMT

Sebastian Vettel kept alive his slim hope of snatching the drivers championship with a stunning pole in a chaotic qualification session at Suzuka. But it looks to be a nervy weekend for Jenson Button as the championship favourite qualified in seventh, two places behind main rival Rubens Barrichello. Button, remember, needs to finish five points clear of [...]