Jenson Button completed Brawn GP’s dream debut weekend by heading a remarkable 1-2 for the reborn team in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
The Briton, whose career was hanging by a thread as the ex-Honda Racing team fought for survival over the winter, banished memories of the past two dismal years by claiming his second career victory ahead of team-mate Rubens Barrichello.
However, Button crossed the winning line under safety car conditions after his race-long pursuer, Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel, saw his equally impressive race end in heartbreak as he collided with Robert Kubica’s fast-charging BMW with three laps to go.
Their contretemps promoted Barrichello to second after a muscular performance from the sport's most experienced driver.
After making a tardy getaway from the outside of the front row, Barrichello triggered a first-corner melee when he smashed into the side of RBR's luckless Mark Webber, before going on to have a further tangle with Kimi Raikkonen.
But despite front wing damage and a drop down the order the Brawn GP car was fast enough to allow him to climb back up the lap chart.
Toyota’s Jarno Trulli finished third on the road courtesy of a charging drive from the pit lane following the team’s qualifying disqualification.
But after the race he was handed a 25s time penalty for passing Lewis Hamilton during the late safety car period, promoting the McLaren driver to third.
It was a morale-boosting result for the reigning world champion and his Woking team after they had spent much of the weekend trying to extract any sort of speed from the problematic MP4-24 chassis.
Ferrari, meanwhile, endured a nightmare start to the season for the second successive year with neither of its drivers finishing the race.
After surging off the start line in their KERS-equipped F60s, both Raikkonen and Felipe Massa faded in the first stint as their soft tyres quickly dropped off in performance.
Eventually Massa had to pull into the garage with a technical gremlin while Raikkonen was on course for a strong points haul before spinning into a wall.
Polesitter Button made a perfect getaway, but Barrichello’s sister car bogged down, thwarting the fast-starting Kubica and causing the field to concertina into the first chicane.
In his haste to make up the lost ground in the braking zone, Barrichello triggered a shunt that eliminated Heikki Kovalainen and ruined the races of local favourite Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld.
Rubens himself emerged with no more than minor front wing damage, but down in seventh place.
Meanwhile his team-mate had taken advantage of the mayhem to make his escape at the front of the field, building a 4.4s advantage over Vettel by the third lap.
The Red Bull ace then got into his stride, however, pegging the gap around the four-second mark as he traded fastest laps with Button.
The Brawn had more fuel on board, so Button knew his lead was safe so long as Vettel was unable to make appreciable inroads into his cushion.
The two Ferrari drivers had used KERS and soft-compound tyres to good effect at the start to move up to third (Felipe Massa) and fifth (Kimi Raikkonen), sandwiched by Kubica’s BMW.
But within a handful of laps their tyre performance dropped like a stone and their mirrors were filled by the chasing pack.
By lap 12 they had both given up the unequal struggle for grip and pitted for harder tyres, as had Kubica (who had also started on softs).
A heavy crash for Kazuki Nakajima on lap 18 briefly looked like bad news for Button, who had yet to come in for service – but the safety car was slow in being deployed and he snuck in in time.
After a long delay the order at the restart was Button from Vettel, Massa, Kubica, Raikkonen and Rosberg.
Massa looked well-placed to pounce with a boost of KERS power, but instead lagged behind the top two, who resumed their duel at the front in closer company than before.
Button always had the upper hand, though, and steadily eked his lead back out to more than five seconds within 10 laps.
Massa removed himself from the equation when he pitted for the second time on lap 32 (a consequence of his early first stop), promoting Kubica to third.
Button’s lead had stabilised at around five seconds before his final stop – whereupon he nearly threw it all away with his only mistake of the afternoon.
Arriving in his pit box in second gear rather than first delayed the process of attaching the fuel nozzle, and he sat stationary for 13 agonising seconds as the team scrambled to complete the service.
Fortunately, however, he had built enough of a buffer to rejoin with his lead over Vettel intact, albeit reduced to 1.5s.
Having got his stint on soft tyres out of the way in the early part of the race, third-placed Kubica was the man to watch in the closing stages as Button and Vettel began to lose grip.
The Pole gradually homed in on Vettel and when the Red Bull driver braked too deep into the first chicane with three laps to go, Kubica immediately seized his opportunity along the following straight.
Vettel – defending the inside line at turn three – refused to yield, and the pair tangled as they went through the corner, badly damaging both cars and sending them into the concrete wall as they attempted to steer into the fast turn five.
Debris was littered across the track and the safety car was instantly deployed.
With so few laps remaining, it was clear there would be no more racing and Vettel tried to wrestle his mangled car around to salvage a points finish.
Ultimately he failed in that quest and a great drive went unrewarded, prompting him to apologise to his team over the radio for being “an idiot”.
The crash elevated Barrichello to second place, ensuring a fairytale Brawn 1-2 in front of the team's new patron Sir Richard Branson.
That result had looked unlikely after Barrichello followed his first-lap faux pas with another ill-judged move on Raikkonen on lap nine – but a new front wing was fitted at his first stop and Barrichello kept his nose clean for the rest of the afternoon.
Trulli sowed the seeds of his post-race penalty by running off the road during the late safety car period.
With the Toyota off the circuit, Hamilton moved past into third, only for Trulli to retake the place in breach of the yellow-flag 'no overtaking' rules.
Hamilton's eventual third place was much, much better than he had dared hope for, giving him a useful haul of points with which to begin his title defence while McLaren continues to work on getting the MP4-24 up to speed.
Glock charged from the pit lane to fifth in the other Toyota, aided by some aggressive but well-judged overtaking, and ironically benefited from team-mate Trulli's penalty to leave Melbourne with fourth.
Fernando Alonso was elevated to fifth after a fairly anonymous drive in a Renault that team boss Flavio Briatore admitted was "just not competitive enough".
Sixth place (seventh before Trulli's demotion) was a disappointment for Nico Rosberg, who had qualified fifth and set the race’s fastest lap.
The Williams driver lost touch with the leaders while trapped behind the soft-tyred cars in the early stages, was delayed by a problem fitting the left-front wheel at his first pit stop, lost further ground on the lap 24 restart avoiding a spinning Nelson Piquet, and finally fell back on soft tyres in the final stint.
Sebastien Buemi belied his status as the only rookie on the grid with a mature drive to eighth for Toro Rosso, thus joining an elite group of drivers in scoring points on his grand prix debut.
With Trulli relegated all the way down to 12th, Toro Rosso got a bonus as Buemi shuffled up to seventh and team-mate Sebastien Bourdais inherited the final point.
Australian GP result - 58 laps
1. BUTTON Brawn
2. BARRICHELLO Brawn +0.8s
3. HAMILTON McLaren +2.9s
4. GLOCK Toyota +4.4s
5. ALONSO Renault +4.8s
6. ROSBERG Williams +5.7s
7. BUEMI Toro Rosso +6.0s
8. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso +6.2s
9. SUTIL Force India +6.3s
10. HEIDFELD BMW +7.0s
11. FISICHELLA Force India +7.3s
12. TRULLI Toyota +26.6s*
13. WEBBER Red Bull +1 lap
14. VETTEL Red Bull +2 laps
15. KUBICA BMW +3 laps
16. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +3 laps
R. MASSA Ferrari +13 laps
R. PIQUET Renault +34 laps
R. NAKAJIMA Williams +41 laps
R. KOVALAINEN McLaren +58 laps
Fastest lap: ROSBERG 1m27.706s
*25-second penalty