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Featured Sport News

Brawn eye Bahrain success

Author: Brandon Barker
Date: 23/04/2009

The Formula One season's hectic start continues this weekend as the circus roles up in Bahrain for the fourth race in five weeks.

The new campaign has hit the headlines both on and off the track, with Brawn GP making a stunning start to their time in the sport with victories for Jenson Button in both Australia and Malaysia, making them early betting favourites to take the constructors' title.

However, after their controversial diffuser system was passed as legal ahead of last weekend's Chinese Grand Prix, Brawn suddenly found themselves not so far in front of the pack after all.

Although Button and team-mate Rubens Barrichello finished third and fourth in Shanghai, they could not match the pace set by the Red Bull team.

Germany's Sebastian Vettel took pole in China and led for almost the entire race to show his and his car's prowess, while Mark Webber enjoyed an excellent second-placed finish.

That result added Red Bull to the list of contenders for this season's championship, which had previously only contained Brawn and possibly Toyota.

However, Aussie Webber didn't seem too thrilled by the performance under wet conditions, telling BBC Sport: "There's nothing to suggest a huge amount has changed since Malaysia when, in the dry, Brawn were a second faster than anyone else.

"That car is definitely strong and they're the team that's the benchmark for every team to try to close in on."

Meanwhile, McLaren showed signs of a slight improvement, but Ferrari's woes continued as Felipe Massa's car gave up the ghost and Kimi Raikkonen ended in a dismal tenth position.

Massa may have some reason to expect better in Bahrain, having won there in each of the last two seasons, while Fernando Alonso won the previous two races.

The Spaniard has been making noises that he expects to try and challenge for a third drivers' crown in five seasons, but so far his Renault has looked short of the pace required to do so.

However, Bahrain could see the applecart upset by a number of teams likely to follow Brawn and Toyota in fitting a rear diffuser, with the much-talked about component sure to become the metatarsal of the F1 scene.

All the teams hoping to emulate the success of Brawn will want to make a good impression in Bahrain before the F1 circus decamps to Europe for the next nine races which make up the meat in the worldwide sandwich.

Given Webber's almost pessimistic appraisal of the race in China, Brawn must again be the team to catch, with Red Bull praying for more bad weather to give them hope of a second victory of their own.

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