F1: Barrichello Might Start Sixth, Button Ninth

Formula 1

F1: Barrichello Might Start Sixth, Button Ninth

Saturday evening the FIA announced to the packed Suzuka pressroom that the grid for the Japanese GP would be published on Sunday morning...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted October 03, 2009 Suzuka (JPN)

After a wild qualifying session in Japan Saturday, the only thing for certain is that Sebastian Vettel will start from the pole. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

On Saturday evening the FIA announced to the packed Suzuka pressroom that the grid for the Japanese GP would be published on Sunday morning.

After consulting with teams and most importantly with key FIA sources we have come up with the following grid. The key to it is the order in which the offences were committed. Each is considered one by one and the grid reset each time.

Crucially, the FIA has deemed them to have been committed in the order; Alonso, Barrichello, Button, Sutil and Buemi. The Swiss driver has apparently been considered to have held up drivers who had already passed the yellow flag.

However we believe there could be some doubt over whether this is actually the case and in fact he may have committed his first impeding offence before all of the yellow flag infringements occurred.

In addition to today’s published offences from Q2 we have also added gearbox penalties for Tonio Liuzzi and Heikki Kovalainen, and chassis changes for Mark Webber and Timo Glock.

We showed our results to Ross Brawn, and having seen where his drivers ended up he said he could go to bed a lot happier!

We believe that the grid will look like this:

1 Vettel
2 Trulli
3 Hamilton
4 Heidfeld
5 Raikkonen
6 Barrichello
7 Sutil
8 Rosberg
9 Button
10 Kubica
11 Kovalainen
12 Buemi
13 Alguersuari
14 Fisichella
15 Nakajima
16 Alonso
17 Grosjean
18 Liuzzi
Pitlane: Webber and Glock

Watch The Japanese Grand Prix LIVE Sunday at 12:30 am. Eastern on SPEED

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