But one things for sure, McLaren need to drop Kovalainen asap. He was a poor partner in a good car last year, but now, he just just utter garbage.

But the overtake between Alsono and Webber was just fantastic! Proof the KERS must NOT be forced into every car. While the system has a clear advantage in boosting, the downside is if you use prior to a corner just like Alonso, then you are just carrying more speed into it and so need to brake earlier. Thus Webber took the advantage, but in every race, Alonso has used KERS brilliantly and the races are all the better for it with some running it and others not. It just wont work if every driver has to have it, even if it is a slimmed down version that’s less heavy.

Anyways, it wont matter next year as it looks like the whole season will be a complete joke.

Oh and yet again Ferrari were a joke. It’s like the 80′s all over again for them.

Brawn GP chiefs have strongly denied any suggestion that they used team orders to hand Jenson Button victory in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Rubens Barrichello had led the way early on, but it was Button who triumphed in the end after he was switched to a two-stop strategy at the first round of pitstops.

Those actions prompted conspiracy theorists to suggest that the team used the strategy to favour Button – something that has been strongly rebuffed by Brawn chiefs Nick Fry and Ross Brawn.

When asked to respond to suggestions that the strategy choice was a deliberate ploy to favour Button’s title charge, Fry told AUTOSPORT: “No. Both sides of the garage were racing.

“Listening to what was going on there was huge determination – firstly for Jenson to make the gap, and then on Rubens’ side of the garage with a bit of frustration at the end that they didn’t make it happen.”

Brawn said that the team never expected the switch to a two-stop to favour Button, and it was only poor lap times from Barrichello in his third stint that cost him the victory.

“If you look at the lap times on the tyres and the fuel, there was a period of the race where he was a lot slower than expected,” explained Brawn. “And that’s what cost him the race because Jenson on more fuel was quicker.”

When asked if he was worried that Barrichello had believed team orders had been used, Brawn said: “I hope not, because we’re not. You saw at the first corner that there are no team orders. Rubens made a great start and got past Jenson.

“I’d love to see Rubens win a race and see his crew win a race because it would be great for the team. There is no priority being given.”

Speaking about Barrichello feeling unhappy after the race, Brawn added: “It’s natural. Any driver who gets beaten and is happy is not a driver I want in the team.

“The fact that Rubens is unhappy is a healthy sign because I’d feel very strange if he was quite content to be second behind Jenson.”

Barrichello’s poor lap times in that penultimate stint were the result of an unidentified problem on his car which cost him time when he needed to build up a cushion over Button.

Speaking about the reasons for switching Button, Fry said: “Obviously he was shorter on fuel than Rubens, and we assumed he would pull away at the front and build a bit of a gap. When that didn’t happen, it was necessary to split them.

“It was something that we had talked about a lot before the race anyway. It was something we had planned for, and it turned out to be the best. We were a little bit worried about [Felipe] Massa and [Sebastian] Vettel, for Rubens that is, and that faded when they both came into the pits together.

“That was a bit of a surprise as we thought Vettel was going to go a bit longer than that. I don’t know if they did that deliberately or that was the plan.”

Lewis Hamilton expressed his frustration at McLaren’s lack of competitiveness after finishing in a lapped ninth place in the Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona – describing the car as “really hardcore” and saying that there was “no hope” of good results at present.

The world champion ended the opening lap at the tail of the field after being forced onto the grass as the lights went out and then being delayed as he avoided the four-car pile-up at the opening complex of corners on lap one.

After fighting his way up to the edge of the points positions, he was forced to make an early final pitstop after overworking his harder set of tyres.

“What can I do? I drove my heart out, as I always do,” Hamilton told BBC TV. “It’s just that the car is not good. I just had no grip.

“It’s just a shame they [McLaren] haven’t given me a car to defend the championship with. The car is that bad. I’m driving the socks off it. There’s just no hope.”

Despite his tough afternoon, the British driver praised the efforts of the McLaren team and refused to write off his hopes of retaining the world title.

“I’m not even thinking about that,” he added when asked if he was already out of contention for the championship. “We’re not even halfway through the season and the car is really hardcore.

“At the moment, for sure we don’t have the car to win the championship, but the team have done a fantastic job and every weekend they do a fantastic job.

“We have great reliability and the morale in the team is high. It’s just a shame they’ve not given me a car to defend the championship with.”

Felipe Massa has conceded Ferrari’s championship chances are over after Jenson Button scored his fourth win in five races at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Button has 41 points out of a possible 45 so far this year, and the Briton and his Brawn team dominated the Spanish race on Sunday.

Massa scored his first points of the year at Barcelona and is already 38 behind Button. Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen is tied with Massa on three points.

The Brazilian reckons his chances of fighting for the title are over.

“In the championship? No, I don’t think so,” Massa told reporters when asked if he could catch Button. “We need to be realistic. After five races they won four.

“Even if we improve massively and we are three or four tenths if front of them they will still score points. So forget it.”

Massa was nonetheless encouraged by his team’s step forward since the last race, but he admits Ferrari is still behind Brawn.

“In Q2 we were two tenths slower. In qualifying, in Q3 we were four tenths slower because of the fuel. Usually the picture is similar in the race,” he said. “Two tenths in the race is quite a big difference. Most of the time they were going slowly away. So that’s the real picture at the moment. Maybe we are still a couple of tenths behind.

“Red Bull I don’t know because I was always in front of Vettel, so I don’t know if I was holding him a lot or he was really similar.

“We still need to improve, but I think if you compare the car we had in this race and the car we had before it’s a big stop forward. That’s really, really encouraging.”

The Ferrari driver looked set for fourth today but was forced to slow down in order to save fuel, in the end dropping to sixth.

Massa said the problem had been with the refueling and not with the calculations.

“We didn’t have a problem with the calculations. We had a problem with the machine. But I don’t know if the problem was human or the machine. We need to analyse what was the problem. It was very frustrating.

“You fight the whole race and then you have to back off. I was already saving fuel in the last run, but it was not enough, so I had to really back off and let Vettel go. I lost a position to Fernando and almost to Nick, so it was quite frustrating.”

Jenson Button says his Brawn GP team has regained its advantage at the head of the field after dominating the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.

Button led team-mate Rubens Barrichello to the second one-two finish for Brawn this year, the Briton scoring his fourth victory in five races.

Now Button is 14 points ahead of Barrichello in the standings, while Brawn leads Red Bull by nearly 30.

The championship leader, who had claimed earlier that he thought Red Bull was ahead of his team in terms of performance, reckons the updates introduced in Spain have moved Brawn back ahead.

“It is a dream come true so far this season, even when times are tough we seem to be able to get the wins,” said Button. “When it goes well it goes well, last year when it went bad it went bad.

“I feel on top of the world at the moment. The team have done a great job and with this package you could see we have got our advantage back again, and thanks to Mercedes as we couldn’t do it without them.”

Button revealed he was originally going to stop three times, like Barrichello, but the team decided to switch his strategy during the race, a move that put him clearly ahead of the Brazilian.

The Briton admitted winning in Barcelona, a difficult track for him, is a real boost for the rest of the season.

“We were both going in that direction but they switched me to two stops to cover all our bases. Three stops was the quicker strategy, we thought. I wasn’t sure about going to two stops because when I put the fuel on board it felt very heavy.

“I didn’t think I would come out ahead of Felipe and Sebastian but I did. So I put my head down and concentrated on going as fast as possible.

“Coming back to Europe and winning at Barcelona, a circuit I have always found tough, is great and gives me a lot of confidence for the rest of the season.”

Rubens Barrichello said he suspected something might have broken on his car after being beaten to Spanish Grand Prix victory by his Brawn team-mate Jenson Button.

The Brazilian had led the first half of the race, but when Button switched from a three to a two-stop strategy, Barrichello was unable to pull out enough of a margin to stay ahead once he had made his additional stop.

“The race evolved quite well, I had a great start and went to the lead,” said Barrichello.

“I was running a tiny bit quicker than Jenson to begin with and had two more laps of fuel, so it was running quite well. I heard they changed Jenson’s strategy and I had to keep on pushing.

“My third set of tyres was not good, I don’t know if something was broken on car. So I couldn’t keep the pace up, and from then on it was a struggle to keep the car on the track and a relief to come second.

“I’m disappointed because I didn’t win the race because I felt I had it in the bag today, but it’s still great for the team.”

He admitted that he had not expected the team to change Button’s strategy at the first stops.

“I was a lap or two longer, and Jenson caught me up a little bit on the strategy because of the safety car, so I was quite happy because having a lap longer and being in front I was delighted, I had the race in my hands,” said Barrichello.

“So I was actually quite surprised when they switched Jenson to two, but from then on I just had to go flat-out.”

Barrichello added that he had pitted early at the end of the race due to traffic, even though by that time Button had switched to the unfavoured hard tyres and was losing time to him.

“I came in a lap or two earlier for my final pit stop because there were lots of cars and blue flags and I was losing time,” said Barrichello.