Brilliant Button takes F1 world title as Webber wins in Brazil

Briton Jenson Button was crowned world champion Sunday when he finished fifth in an incident-filled Brazilian Grand Prix won by Australian Mark Webber.

Button, who has led the championship all season after winning the opening Australian Grand Prix in March, had started 14th on the grid, but drove with courage and determination to achieve his goal and send the Brawn GP team into wild celebration.

"We are the champions," Button sang out of key from his cockpit after crossing the finishing line and capturing the title with one race to spare.

Later the 29-year-old told the BBC: "It's really amazing especially after the last few weeks. It was such an awesome race - I'm world champion baby!

"When I first jumped in a car 21 years ago I never expected to be world champion - but we did it today."

Button's success ensured also that the Brawn team, created out of the ashes of the defunct Honda team last winter, also clinched the constructors' world championship.

"It's very special," said team boss Ross Brawn who paid tribute to Button and also former company workers who were laid off in the team's reorganisation.

"The work over the winter was sensational and I give all my thanks to all the people who couldn't be with us and who had to leave.

"The second half of the season was hard but it was a great race today. Jenson knew what he had to do."

Button's great success came in his 169th Grand Prix and at the end of his ninth season in Formula One, a year when he won six of the opening seven races and then struggled to recapture that form.

It was a classic case of the tortoise and the hare in the second half of the season as Button survived the intensifying pressure around him, but continued to collect points.

Webber, in a Red Bull, won comfortably ahead of Pole Robert Kubica in a BMW Sauber and third-placed outgoing drivers' champion Briton Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren Mercedes.



German Sebastian Vettel, in the second Red Bull, was fourth ahead of Button with Finn Kimi Raikkonen sixth for Ferrari.

Swiss Sebastien Buemi of Toro Rosso was seventh and the luckless local hero Brazilian veteran Rubens Barrichello, in the second Brawn, eighth after starting from pole position.

He suffered from heavy traffic and then a late puncture that wrecked his hopes of glory.

After Saturday's torrential storms, the race began in dry conditions and warm sunshine, but that did not signal any reduction in the level of incident as three accidents and a fire in the pit lane lit up the opening laps.

Barrichello made a fine clean start to lead, but behind him Kimi Raikkonen attacked hard on super-soft tyres and KERS on his Ferrari, jumping to third through the Senna S curves before grazing Webber's Red Bull.

Jarno Trulli of Toyota was also in the wars, colliding with Adrian Sutil's Force India. Both went off and took two-times world champion Fernando Alonso out with them in his Renault.

Trulli was so furious he confronted Sutil as soon as they had climbed from their cars and the pair, with their racing uniforms and helmets on, were seen gesticulating and shouting as their cars were rescued.

All this resulted in a safety car being required and Heikki Kovlainen of McLaren, who had spun on the opening lap, was swiftly into the pits, but exited prematurely with a fuel hose still attached to his car and petrol pouring from it.

This flew into Raikkonen's car, which briefly burst into flames as the fuel hit the exhaust system.

The safety car came in after five laps with Button benefiting from the mayhem and advancing to ninth from 14th.

Given this encouragement, he then settled down to produce a series of aggressive laps and dashing passing moves as he swooped past Romain Grosjean's Renault for eighth and then Kazuki Nakajima's Williams for seventh.

At the front, Barrichello led by 1.8 seconds ahead of Webber and the field closing up rapidly before the Brazilian pitted after 21 laps.

This left Webber clear in front of the field and he made the most of it when Barrichello rejoined in heavy traffic in eighth place, one ahead of Vettel who overtook him.

The first round of pit stops saw Button move up to second and briefly lead having passed the troublesome Kamui Kobayashi of Toyota.

Webber pitted after 26 laps, but rejoined ahead of Button with his heavily-fuelled Red Bull. Button pitted after 30 laps and rejoined 11th.

More drama came on lap 31 when Williams' Kazuki Nakajima crashed off at the end of the straight, upset by the illegal weaving of Kobayashi.

Vettel then pitted after 38 laps and came out behind Button who, thanks to the one-stoppers' stops, climbed to fourth by lap 45 when the order was Webber, Kubica, Barrichello, Button and Vettel.

Button, however, needed to take a second pit stop and this came with 16 laps left.

He moved up to sixth and within reach of seizing the title, a prospect that was enhanced with eight laps to go when Barrichello was forced to pit with a puncture to his left rear tyre, following a minor collision with Hamilton.