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Formula One
F1: Monaco Grand Prix Stat Wrap
Sean Kelly has all the essential facts and figures after Jenson Button took victory in Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix.
Sean Kelly  |  Posted May 24, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Our Jense contributes a statistic of his own to this week's Stat Wrap (Getty)
Monaco Grand Prix Photo Gallery HERE

It never really looked in doubt did it?

Jenson Button, as you almost certainly know by now, because the first British driver since Sir Jackie Stewart in 1973 to win the Monaco Grand Prix from pole position on Sunday. In doing so he claimed his fifth win from six races this year.

It is fitting that Button should pilot a Brawn GP chassis to victory. Stewart was driving for Tyrrell during that ’73 triumph, a team that was subsequently sold to British American Tobacco, then to Honda, and then to Ross Brawn, so the lineage is perfect.

Button also scored the 72th victory for a Mercedes-Benz engine in Sunday’s race, moving them level for 4th on the all-time engine wins list with Honda…the people who formerly owned this team from 2006-08! Button led the first lap of a race for only the second time all season, after Australia, and he also surpassed Juan-Manuel Fangio (277.64) and Jimmy Clark (274) on the all-time points list – he now has 283.

It was a big turnaround from his most recent Monaco form. In the three Monaco GPs that he has been teamed with Rubens Barrichello, the Brazilian has beaten him every time, and curiously, Button had finished 11th on each occasion.

Barrichello followed him home for Brawn GP’s third 1-2 in the last six races. The Brazilian, who was 37 years old on the day of qualifying, has now scored five podiums and 42 points in the Principality, without ever actually winning the race. Third on the grid was Barrichello’s best ever qualifying performance in 17 starts in Monaco, and he also had a notable points achievement – he moved past Fernando Alonso into the career points lead among active drivers (565).

However, on lap 48 Barrichello quietly surpassed Michael Schumacher’s record of 13,909 laps raced in an F1 career. It has taken the Brazilian a long time to overhaul Schumacher’s record, as he has started 274 races compared with Schumacher’s 249. The discrepancy is caused by the fact that Barrichello has retired from a lot more races in his career (93) than the ever-reliable Schumacher (55).

Third place fell to Kimi Räikkönen, who gave Ferrari what was staggeringly their first podium of 2009. The last time they had to wait this long into a season before climbing the podium was in 1993 when, coincidentally, Jean Alesi was also third in Monte-Carlo, two races before Jean Todt took charge and led the team to glory.

Räikkönen took the fourth Monaco front row start of his career this weekend, which includes a pole position in 2005. However, he was quickest of all in the Q2 session with a fearsome 1:14.514 lap, the first lap of Monaco in excess of a 100mph average since the 2006 season.

Backing up his teammate was Felipe Massa, who was outqualified by Räikkönen in Monaco for the first time since they became teammates in 2007. That said, he still achieved the 50th top six start of his 111-race career, and set the fastest lap of the race on Sunday.

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