2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Final race of the season. Button already won the Driver's championship last week, so there's not a lot to play for here. However, Blog-favorite Sebastian Vettel

A couple of early passes by the BMW team on the first lap. Not too pretty of passes, but it was nice to see that the circuit has been designed enough to ensure that some overtaking is possible. Interesting circuit design, though. A stupidly long straight (the longest in the F1 calendar), and a bunch of twisties.

Coming off a very dominant qualifying performance, it'll be interesting to see how dominant Lewis Hamilton is during the race. Even though Hamilton was 6 tenths of a second faster than anyone else during qualifying, Vettel in 2nd seems to be sticking with him pretty well.

And a really nice pass from Kamui Kobayashi in his 2nd Grand Prix, on 2009 World Champion Jenson Button.

And Vettel just passed Hamilton in the first round of pitstops. So, its now Vettel in first, Hamilton 2nd, and Webber 3rd. Although, that all seems moot, as Hamilton retires with brake issues shortly after his first stop.

And that's actually an interesting development in the Constructors championship. Brawn has obviously locked up first, and Red Bull Racing has locked up 2nd. However, McLaren (Hamilton's team) is currently one point ahead of Ferrari for 3rd. Blog-second-favorite Kimi Raikonnen (from Ferrari) is currently in 6th, one place ahead of McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen. That'd end up with both teams even on points, but I think with Hamilton's 2 race wins will trump Raikonnen's 1. (Neither of their teammates has done much of anything this season). And Kovalainen just passed Raikonnen in their first and only pit stop. (The front-runners are on 2-stop strategies, and the guys further back are running on 1-stop strategies)

A very interesting pit stop for Torro Rosso's Jaime Algersuari. He completely missed the Torro Rosso pits, and ended up trying to pit in Red Bull's box. All this while Vettel was coming down the pit lane as he prepared to make his stop. Luckily the Red Bull guys managed to get everyone out of the way, and get Algersuari to pass through in preparation for Vettel showing up. And since they waited until he was almost out of fuel to pit, Algersuari ran out of fuel since he'd already passed his team's pit box.

And Kubica just went to pass Buemi in a similar place he bullied his way past someone else earlier in the race. Unfortunately, it appears that he overcooked it and spun, and lost out, and then got passed by Nico Rosberg.

And things might be shaping up for a last few laps interestingness between 2nd place Mark Webber and 3rd place Jenson Button. Button's been reeling Webber in, during the last few laps. And coming off that stupidly long straight, Button's front wing was probably less than 2 feet off of Webber's rear. After some rather close racing on the last lap between Webber and Button. But, Webber prevailed in the end, just barely.

Vettel's fourth win of the season, which definitely helped solidify his 2nd place in the Driver's Championship, finishing 11 points behind Champion Jenson Button, and 7 points ahead of Rubens Barichello.

And another 1-2 finish for Red Bull, their 4th of the season. Tied with Brawn in that respect.

So, the season ends with 6 wins for Button, 4 for Vettel, and 2 for Webber, Barichello, and Hamilton. With Kimi Raikonnen taking the win for the only race not won by either of those 5.

And despite 6 wins and a 3rd place in the first 7 races, this is only the second time since then that Button's been on the podium, with the 3rd here, and a 2nd in Italy.

So, we'll have to wait until mid-March for the next race report, as the 2010 season opens in Bahrain. Which will be strange, as it'll be the first time since I've been watching F1, that the season hasn't opened in Australia. Just like this is the first time that the season has ended somewhere other than Brazil.

And just FYI all the McLarens and Ferraris finished outside the points. So McLaren gets 3rd place in the Constructor's Championship.

Be interesting to see if the more senior Mark Webber or the higher-scoring Sebastian Vettel get the first seat at Red Bull next year. Probably be Vettel...