Serious title contenders

There has been certainly big surprises on how the big guns such as the Ferrari & McLaren team has perform so far throughout the early season of the F1 campaign. New title contenders has emerged in the name of Jenson Button & Sebastian Vettel. F1 legend Michael Schumacher has reckons that Jenson Button will the favorite to run away with the championship this year

LEADING THE CHARGE BACK TO EUROPE: Sebastian Vettel (left) and Jenson Button have been the race winners so far in 2009 - but that may change in Barcelona. Images: AFP

He's won three of the first four races of the 2009 Formula 1 season in Asia and the Middle East but now Jenson Button will head back to Europe and into the unknown.
The championship-leading Briton has been the quickest and most consistent driver so far but, as McLaren's World champion Lewis Hamilton showed in Bahrain on Sunday, the rest are picking up the pace.
Button's Brawn GP team had an early advantage with a controversial rear diffuser which others first tried in vain to outlaw it but are now busy copying.
By the time the 10 teams gather again in Barcelona for next week's Spanish GP the new world order may have changed again

Brawn has significant new developments coming

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Button, winner in Australia, Malaysia and Bahrain and third in China, said: "We've had four races; they've been pretty important to us, especially at the start of the season when people have reliability issues or are making mistakes - but when we get to Europe we don't know where anybody is going to be."
Brawn has significant new developments coming to its battle-scarred car for the Circuit de Catalunya but so have McLaren, Renault, BMW and struggling Ferrari.
With testing banned during the season, the first real evidence of how successful any of them is will come next week during Friday practice.
Button said: "We have an upgrade coming for Barcelona, I just hope it's enough. There's so much change already in the sport and going back to Europe it's going to be even more change

Jenson Button is getting his long overdue reward

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Brawn and Red Bull, 1-2 winners in China, are a refreshing change after years of domination by Ferrari and McLaren. Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel is a fresh-faced new talent with bags of character and Button is getting his long overdue reward after years of toil among the back markers with now-departed Honda.
Toyota, still without a win since its debut in 2002, is coming more to the fore with first and second on the Bahrain grid. Scratch the surface, however, and the same old rivalries are still very much in play.
Adrian Newey, the design genius behind Red Bull, was Brawn GP owner Ross Brawn's opposite number when they were at McLaren and Ferrari respectively during the Mika Hakkinen/Michael Schumacher era.
HUGE HONDA INVESTMENT
The first stage of the season has in many respects resembled a re-run of the old Newey-Brawn duel but with cars of different colours. Mercedes-powered Brawn is also Honda's successor and owes many of its achievements to Honda's huge investment during the past 18 months.
If Honda is now cheering on the supposed minnows, having pulled out of F1 in November 2008, it's as much as anything because they've kept Toyota off the top.
The car Button will have in Barcelona will be much more of a Brawn than a Honda. Ross Brawn said: "It was such an achievement just to get the car to the first race that there were no developments left, that was it.
"From the time Honda announced it was stopping at the end of November the budget was very limited, the developments weren't coming, but they are coming now so we can get the ball rolling again with improvements." - Reuters