1 S Vettel 1:34:03.414
2 M Webber 1:34:21.271
3 J Button 1:34:21.881
4 R Barrichello 1:34:26.149
5 N Heidfeld 1:34:29.667

BBC: Vettel wins after Hamilton fades

Sebastian Vettel cruised to victory at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix ahead of Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber after Lewis Hamilton was forced to retire early.

The McLaren pole-sitter had to stop on lap 20 with a brake problem, after which Germany’s Vettel romped home in Formula 1’s first-ever twilight race.

ITV F1: Vettel leads Red Bull 1-2 in finale

Sebastian Vettel scored his fourth victory of the 2009 campaign in resounding fashion in the Abu Dhabi finale, leading home Mark Webber in a Red Bull 1-2.

The pre-race expectation was that dominant polesitter Lewis Hamilton would romp away into the distance, but it didn’t turn out that way as Vettel shadowed him throughout the opening stint and moved ahead with a later first pit stop.

Official F1 website full race results

Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel came alive in the dying moments of the final qualifying session of 2009, but McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton kept his nerve and ultimately decimated their chances of taking pole position for the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with a lap of 1m 40.948s on Saturday evening.

The hotly anticipated duel between Hamilton and his successor as world champion Jenson Button never materialised as Button struggled with a tyre vibration and had to settle for fifth place behind Brawn GP team-mate Rubens Barrichello.

The Brawn driver snatched the fastest time late on from McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton with a lap of one minute 40.625 seconds in hot conditions.

Brawn team mate Rubens Barrichello was third fastest, ahead of Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi, BMW Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld and the second McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen.

1 Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes 1:40.625
2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:40.627
3 Rubens Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes 1:40.907
4 Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:40.934
5 Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 1:41.241

Hamilton topped the times in the first 90-minute session and the team managed a 1-2 in the evening, this time with Kovalainen the quicker of the pair.

1 Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 1:41.307
2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:41.504
3 Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes 1:41.541
4 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1:41.591
5 Kobayashi Toyota 1:41.636

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is the last race of the Formula 1 2009 calendar. The organizers are working very hard to make sure that the first F1 race in Abu Dhabi will be a race to remember.

It is guaranteed to make history as the first day/night Formula 1 race ever. Quote from the official website:

“Abu Dhabi, UAE, 28th August 2009. The world will experience the stunning beauty of the Arabian sunset as a backdrop to the inaugural 2009 Formula 1™ Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with the announcement today of a new race start time at 5pm. As a result, for the first time in Formula 1™ history, a race is scheduled to start in daylight and end during night-time.”

If drivers were given the choice they would probably go for a day or even a night race, not a “sunset race”. How dangerous/safe the race will be remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, Formula 1 has changed a lot in the last few years with TV schedules and license fee money starting to play unhealthy role.