Original subtitles

Here is Jenson Button,

winner in Melbourne, winner in Malaysia, winner in Bahrain, and he's done it again!

You couldn't come up with a Hollywood script.

No, I'd never believe you.

Jenson Button crosses the line, takes the chequered flag.

This opportunity doesn't come around for many people.

This season is made for me. I'm gonna win the championship.

Oh, you have built me a monster of a car.

Tell us what you said to your drivers?

Yeah, just don't hit each other.

We are here to fight and obviously to win.

Suddenly, boom, we managed to break them.

This is the perfect way to throw it away.

The emotions were starting to show.

It's possibly the biggest crisis to hit motor sport in its 60-year history.

Some of the sport's biggest names said they were breaking away

to form a rival championship.

The objective of Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone was

to divide and conquer the teams.

They weren't gonna give us the money that was rightfully ours

unless we signed for 2010.

So, at one hand, we wanted to stay loyal to FOTA,

but on the other hand,

we needed to know that Bernie was gonna pay us that money.

Because, without that money, it completely scuppered any future for the team.

Bernie could see this would kill FOTA.

I signed the deal because we were desperate.

But, for us, it was signing with the devil.

We'd realised we'd been played.

The teams wanna leave Formula 1.

You guys make a commitment with Bernie for 2010?

Yeah, because we had no money.

We signed a letter in the morning.

We were due to go to a FOTA meeting in the afternoon.

Bernie makes a side deal with you,

tells the rest of the teams, FOTA,

that you just made a deal with him that goes against the deal with FOTA.

Nick and I had to go to Renault headquarters, where all the teams were,

and explain our position.

Through Bernie, they already knew

we'd signed with Formula 1 for 2010.

Yeah, you can imagine how popular we were.

And so, then you walk in that room with Ross,

and they're like, "What the fuck?"

They were not impressed.

The room full of Formula 1 team principals,

stony silence.

It was very clear that we were now the enemy.

You know, we should move elsewhere.

But if you wanna play with the big boys,

then you better expect that this is going to be, you know, tough,

and it was tough.

At the end of the day, everybody wants the same thing,

you know, a strong Formula 1 Championship.

They want a chance to win and make a lot of money.

Bernie knew what he wanted as an end goal.

I don't think he really knew how he was gonna get there necessarily.

The problem is, what they were short of, collectively,

they didn't have any balls.

Yeah. Yeah.

Shouldn't make threats unless you intend to carry them out.

At this point in time, Brawn are a hundred per cent team Bernie,

team Max, team FIA.

And then suddenly, Martin Whitmarsh asked for a private meeting

with Nick and with Ross.

Norbert Haug, who represented Mercedes-Benz, came to the room.

Then Martin left the room,

and Ross was left with Norbert Haug and Nick.

Ross took a call from Dieter Zetsche,

the chairman and CEO of Mercedes.

He wanted to know which side we were on.

He said, "Stay strong. Stay in the group. Don't-Don't splinter."

"If you guys get yourself into lots of trouble commercially,

then we'll see what we can do."

We've got a strong indication here from the chairman and CEO,

Mercedes could be interested in investing in the team in some way.

But we've got to hold firm with the FOTA side.

You have to look after yourself.

You have to look after your team,

and you have to survive.

Were you aware of when Nick and Ross

signed that agreement to join Bernie and Max Mosley for 2010?

Yes.

It's all about trying to wordsmith things as cleverly as you possibly can.

We needed Bernie to feel that we were committing,

but we needed to know that there was a get-out if we needed it.

Brawn's legal director added a last-minute clause.

So when Bernie told the other teams about the agreement,

he was in clear breach of confidentiality,

which rendered the agreement null and void.

Ross defected from one side to the other and signed the FOTA document

and became part of the FOTA press release for the following day.

That incensed Bernie…

Out the way, before I get upset.

…because it took away his negotiating hand.

Not so cuddly now, huh?

There's so much going on.

There's crisis in Formula 1.

You're ahead in the championship.

The next race coming up is the British GP, Silverstone.

Yeah, let's go there in a positive frame of mind.

Let's go there and see this as an opportunity to show,

in very difficult circumstances, we can do a better job than anyone else.

My whole life, I dreamed of being a Formula 1 driver.

When I look back at Nigel Mansell winning his home Grand Prix,

and the crowds flooding onto the track surrounding his car and--

It's just such a special memory for me.

So I wanted that.

Sign that, please?

Jenson, when are you going to come to Ferrari?

He is a British driver.

Now he's leading the World Championship.

He's a new hero. Everyone's talking about him.

Huge expectation.

He'd never had this situation in his life before.

You've won six out of seven races.

You've won the last four races

and you're coming to your home circuit.

This is the one that I wanted to win so much.

You could hear the crowd.

You could see the crowd all cheering, and I think they just loved the story.

I came here as the championship leader. It's the one race you wanna win.

What are we to expect today at Silverstone in 2009?

There is a huge crowd here, an enormous crowd.

You can feel the passion.

They came here with high expectations

that this man could dominate this Grand Prix as he has dominated the season,

and it's gonna be his toughest call yet.

Silverstone's a tough track.

You'd think if you had a car that was dominant in Barcelona,

it would still be pretty damn good in Silverstone.

But it turns out the opposition were now starting to come back at them.

Even though I'm starting P6,

I still feel that the car is gonna come alive.

If you're wondering why Jenson Button is so far down,

he could not get the heat into his tyres to get that grip.

Barrichello, great qualifying for him.

Qualification: Rubens P2, Jenson P6.

Did you see anything with Jenson having pressure?

If you ask me,

from the bottom of my heart, if I had one wish,

either winning the championship or winning my home Grand Prix,

I would still go for my winning my-my home Grand Prix.

-Really? -Yes.

So, for sure, it's-- it's a pressure to deliver.

We're almost ready to go at Silverstone in 2009.

We're ready and off!

And there goes Vettel.

There goes the Brawn as well, but look how Vettel moves across.

Jenson Button's dropped well down.

He's been caught by a number of cars there. The Ferrari haring forward as well.

It's Räikkönen who's had a great start, an absolute charging start.

Button there really wrestling the car.

What we were seeing as a bit of a pattern

was the hot races were going well, and Silverstone's not normally that hot.

We were struggling to generate tyre temperature.

Jenson Button, seven seconds down already.

What a shock for him. Two weeks ago, he'd already got the lead.

I just could not get the tyres working.

I'd be weaving on the straights to try and get these tyres working.

And compare myself to Rubens, who was much faster than me.

Barrichello in third and pushes on.

Jenson is very gentle with a steering wheel.

So, whenever there was lower track temperature, he would suffer,

not getting the right amount of temperature on the tyre.

But can't you just go,

"Okay, I'm going to push it a little bit more and bring the temperature up"?

It's difficult because it is with you.

A driver have a way to turn the wheel that he feels more comfortable

and a way to drive.

I don't understand what I need to do to get these things working.

That moment where, suddenly, your performance takes a dip

shakes your confidence a lot.

Jenson Button's run is over.

It's Sebastian Vettel winning at Silverstone.

And here comes Mark Webber. It's a 1-2 for Red Bull.

People in England were already giving Jenson the cup for the world champion.

They thought it was done.

That gave me strength.

That gave me power to go for it.

Barrichello for third, so Brawn on the podium again.

Massa will take fourth, Rosberg fifth and Jenson Button sixth.

I just felt like a failure at that point.

Finishing sixth.

My home Grand Prix in a car that should have done much better.

Yeah, I just felt broken.

Would you say, for Silverstone, the fairy tale had ended?

We knew we had some work to do.

Red Bull are now very strong.

Suddenly, boom, we managed to break them on the same conditions.

You know, we were then able to have a car that we could go racing.

The arm wrestler is now going over centre.

It's starting now to swing back in our favour a little bit.

It's the first race you beat Jenson.

How did that feel?

I felt that I was on a high.

From now on, uh, I'm unbeatable.

Rubens would've been quite pleased with his performance.

He beat Jenson. He'd got the most out of the car.

Jenson knew he just didn't get it together that weekend.

It was a disaster,

and I took a while to get over that race, uh, mentally.

Because I didn't understand it.

Now, Formula 1 bosses have reached a deal

to save the sport from a threatened split by disgruntled teams.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Thank you all for coming.

The basic news is that there will be no split.

There will be one championship in 2010,

which is, I think, something we all hoped for.

You know, Bernie had to change significantly his financial terms

in order to not see a breakaway, so it cost him a fortune.

I'm sure Bernie might say we welshed on the deal.

All I would say is, when you get people in a corner,

unfortunately, you have to do what you have to do.

Although it certainly wasn't comfortable at the time.

Were you there when, like, you got the call? Or did you hear--

-Well, we can cut-- We cut-- -Like, how did Flavio--

We can cut a long story short.

Bernie did not achieve what he wanted to achieve.

I mean, I travel the world business-wise on a handshake.

I don't wanna hear about contracts.

Normally, you have to scribble something down to remind you.

But the minute you've got to take a contract and do something about it,

you've done a bad deal.

Was it actually the most serious it had ever been,

in your experience of Formula 1,

that there could actually be a breakaway series?

I always think, if you're gonna put a gun to somebody's head,

make sure there's a bullet in it.

And I don't think the teams had a bullet.

Maybe there wasn't a bullet in it,

but maybe they had a shell in their hand.

The teams are to do more to control their spending,

and Max Mosley will step down as president of the sport's governing body,

the FIA, later this year.

The teams were always going to get rid of me in October.

Well, they still are.

Whether the person who succeeds me

will be more to their taste than I am, it remains to be seen.

We won because Mosley understood

that with Brawn he went too far, in term of dictator,

so was better to accept the opinion of the majority of the teams.

The work of FOTA has been crucial to have to be all together

and to maintain big teams in Formula 1.

In the end, common sense prevails.

So, they get a bigger piece of the cake, right?

Yeah.

A-A little bit like me, they got fatter.

But I've got fatter with a tummy.

They got fatter in the bank.

The cake got divided a bit more evenly.

A bit more in favour of the teams,

and we had peace, or relative peace.

Is it fair to say, from the outside, in this story,

that Silverstone was the end of something

and moving into the beginning of the doubt?

It was the beginning of, "Can we hold it together?"

There's a shift.

One, in our confidence,

but just, two, in-- in our pace compared to our competitors.

The 2009 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring is underway.

Can Webber get away?

Can Barrichello come through?

There's a charge down to that first corner, and Barrichello looks good.

Mark Webber was very aggressive

against Barrichello down to turn one.

I'd lost him in the mirror, and it just was beautifully in the blind spot.

Boom, we touched and I was like…

Opposite sides of the circuit.

Barrichello for Brawn, into the lead from Webber.

I was still fairly competitive.

I was running so well ahead of Jenson,

but, uh, there were some problems.

Now, here's the race leader, Rubens Barrichello.

Rubens came into the pits.

The guy went on with the fuel nozzle.

As he went on,

he clearly wasn't connected, and there was no delivery

coming through to the hose.

I think we lost four or five seconds.

But at that point, when you're standing there, it seems like an eternity.

This is a real battle now for the Brawns.

It's a 1-2 for Red Bull, and look at Brawn.

A fifth and sixth. Barrichello and Button.

It's every bit as bad as they might have feared.

In the race, you caught Rubens, but you couldn't pass him.

Rubens, he's a clever dude. He knows what he's doing.

He knows where to place the car so that you can't overtake.

And there's one person that Rubens doesn't want to overtake him.

It's me.

After Silverstone, I was on a high, yeah.

I was running fast.

Jenson felt you were holding him up.

Did he?

Every time I made a move to dive down the inside,

he immediately would move.

He just covered me off everywhere.

Ross came on the radio and asked you to let Jenson through.

Can't help but think

that they ought to be releasing Button from Barrichello there.

So, which one is coming in first of the Brawn team?

Barrichello into the pit.

It wasn't like we were fighting for the win,

but he knew every single point he could take off me

would matter for the championship.

As we stand, with Webber from Vettel,

Massa, Rosberg, Button and Barrichello. Those are the top six.

Jenson Button will still lead,

but his championship lead will have been cut,

and Sebastian Vettel will be second.

Mark Webber up into third, and Rubens Barrichello dropping to fourth.

And now it's going to be victory for Mark Webber.

Suddenly, we've got our momentum.

The points gap is… …is coming down.

It's at that point, you suddenly start to believe

we can really do this.

Rubens Barrichello, it was going so well.

Where did it go wrong?

Well, I guess it's, uh, on the strategy, on the pit lane.

Um, it was a good show from-- from the team, how to lose a race today.

The frustration was beginning to mount.

Rubens, in particular after Germany, was very unhappy.

Um, and it's very rare for a driver to be quite so outspoken against the team.

-He threw the team under the bus. -He did throw us under the bus.

To be very honest with you,

I wish I can get on the plane and go back home right now.

I don't wanna talk to anybody in the team because I don't want to understand.

There will be a lot of "blah, blah, blah, blah",

and I don't wanna hear that.

Are you saying the team are favouring Jenson?

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm saying that there was a good show how to lose a race today.

I'm not saying that they favoured anyone.

Yeah, I remember standing behind him whilst he was doing the interview,

sort of texting Ross saying, "Rubens is not happy."

Um, he said, "Send him to me as soon as he gets back."

So, yeah. There's not a huge amount you can do to stop that.

You just have to manage the aftermath.

Once he understands how the race went,

then, uh, his-- his view on things will be a little different.

Yeah, we asked him about the debrief,

and he said, "Yeah, I don't want to hear all this, 'blah, blah, blah'."

Um, what do you make of that?

I think it's a frustrated racing driver.

To be Brazilian in motor sport,

you have no idea the pressure.

We had amazing drivers in the past.

Fittipaldi, two-times world champion. Nelson Piquet, three-times world champion.

Ayrton Senna, three-times world champion.

Any driver that came after Ayrton Senna, the pressure is even higher.

Because, if you are second, you are nobody.

You were driving with Ferrari from 2000 to 2005.

You've come runner-up in the championship,

I believe, over the course of the time, two times.

Yes.

We're within a few miles of the finish,

and is Rubens just slowing up for a formation finish?

Is that man there, Ross Brawn, telling Rubens Barrichello he has to pull over?

Oh, he's getting very close to Michael Schumacher,

but Rubens Barrichello comes through.

He's not gonna let Michael through, is he?

No, they're gonna-- Yes, he is!

I do not believe it.

What is going on?

My time at Ferrari,

although it was fantastic because the team was-- was really good,

I saw that I had no-- no room to be what I wanted to be.

Michael Schumacher wins the Austrian Grand Prix.

He doesn't deserve to win it. That is outrageous.

Rubens had been through the wringer

as teammate to Michael Schumacher.

And I think he was probably, psychologically, a little bit wounded.

And the winning driver gives it to Rubens Barrichello.

This was an-- an opportunity for him to have another chance.

I was, uh, dealing with, uh,

with the fact that we could not lose points

if we wanted Jenson to win the championship.

But I didn't care that.

I'm good friends with Jenson, but I wanna beat him as well.

So you did consider what perhaps you were asked to do in Ferrari?

-Yes. -But that situation…

That wasn't happening.

I don't know how you say that in Brazil.

How do you say, "No more. Not another time"?

So, do you think Rubens was like, "Who's the number one driver?"

-Yeah, the-- -"Am I--"

You know, "I-I just came from, you know, Ferrari.

-But I don't wanna be number two anymore." -Yeah.

My approach has always been,

you start the season in the same cars, same opportunity.

One of you may start to show

you've got a better chance of winning the world championship.

And as a team, we're going to support that guy

'cause he'll be our best chance of winning the world championship.

So that was the principle.

And that principle…

down the road…

might get tested.

Oh, for sure.

So, after the German Grand Prix, Jenson Button has 68 points.

You have 44.

How big a gap do you emotionally feel about 24 points?

All I thought is that I wanted to keep alive

the championship up to the last race.

Here comes Barrichello.

I remember saying to Jock…

I remember him saying to me, "We can't see anything wrong.

Just keep pushing."

So, I said, "Jock, it's, uh-- it's something really wrong. I'm coming in."

So Barrichello down in 13th.

He won't have time, uh, to repair the car.

So Barrichello's out--

- Oh, Ferrari. - There is Felipe Massa.

Down here in the Brawn garage, something's broken on the rear suspension.

So, an unhappy looking Rubens Barrichello.

When I saw that I wouldn't have a chance to go out again,

because they had to reconstruct the whole back of the car…

I realised there was something wrong. Felipe crashed.

Just looking down at Ferrari,

a bit concerned on the Ferrari pit wall.

Apparently, he's had on both.

So maybe there's something-- Something is broken on the front…

It was hard to see on the TV,

but I remember them, on the radio, saying something hit his face.

We get the car back in the garage,

and we see that the back of the car has collapsed down.

So we start taking the bodywork off,

and we sort of look at things, and we're like,

"Where's the-- The spring's gone.

But how has the-- how has the rear spring disappeared?"

I remember commentating live on that,

and then somebody in my ear said there was a piece hit him on the head.

They'd seen from the onboard camera.

And then someone came to me and said,

"That's-- That's the piece that came out of your car."

I know it was particularly distressing for Rubens.

They were very close friends.

Yeah, I was shaking.

I'm older than Massa.

I need to take care of him.

Wh-What's happening?

Everybody straight away, you start to think,

"Have we done something or missed something on the car?

Or have we not done something properly that has allowed this to happen?"

There was a, sort of, 10- or 15-minute period

where you don't really know what's gone on…

-Right. -…how it's happened.

And I just remember everybody just felt so sick and awful.

At that point, I wondered, "Why Massa? Why me?"

And I saw him screaming

with a lot of blood on his face. A lot of blood.

We can just say that he has been brought to the hospital.

At the moment, we cannot say anything more.

I had to go to the stewards and the technical director

and explain what had happened.

The spring came out of the bodywork,

and when you've seen it in slow motion,

it's bouncing down the road ahead of Felipe, and it goes to the left.

Just as he gets there, it bounces back to the right, right in front of him.

It hit him just above his eye socket, and it was a really scary time.

We don't know if and when he will come back.

And the doctors told me, "It was a miracle."

Because for one, two, three millimetres--

-Millimetre. -Yeah.

Uh, Massa was very close to lose completely the eye.

I have the helmet.

You have the helmet?

Nice looking helmet.

It is still with the blood, so I didn't clean.

The helmet is the same,

with the blood around and--

So, this is actually what's happened to me.

So the helmet did a pretty good job.

- Yeah. - Right?

And, you know, uh, this helmet is a-- was a carbon helmet.

And, uh, maybe three years before, it would have been completely different.

And after this accident, the FIA,

they made this part of the helmet a lot stronger.

Mmm.

So now, if it happens again, the same accident,

the driver will jump off the car without any problem.

When the accident happened, it was horrendous.

Massa didn't race for Ferrari for the rest of the season.

So, the FIA did a proper investigation on it

but said that it wasn't the team's fault.

You still feel guilty that something's happened that's connected to our car.

And so that was hanging over us for the whole weekend.

The two Brawn cars suffered their worst qualifying hour of the season.

Where is Jenson Button gonna be?

We're about to find out after these five red lights go out.

They're not being held for long.

They're away.

Alonso from Vettel. Webber's making a great charge there.

Jenson Button's down in ninth.

Button wide there through 11.

Both Brawns having a terrible start.

Barrichello showing down in 18th place.

This is going from bad to worse, currently, for the Brawns.

When you're winning a race and there's nothing going wrong, well, it's great.

But I always think, in these-- these very difficult periods,

is where a team gets measured.

Jenson Button and Brawn

leading in the Drivers' and the Constructors' Championship,

struggling even to score just one point, and we still have seven races to go.

The emotions were starting to show.

You know, we'd had this euphoria of the beginning of the season,

and now it was getting tough.

Lewis Hamilton.

He's a winner again.

The first time in 2009, the world champion takes the chequered flag.

Jenson Button coming round to take seventh place.

Barrichello will be out of the points.

The whole team, including myself,

had to think about how we were gonna handle this.

We always said we were six months behind the top guys,

and six months later, we're back at the front.

Ross, I've known you. I've followed your career for many years.

I haven't seen you looking so down after a race for quite a while.

Are you all right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, this is a-- It's a problem we've gotta try and solve.

With everything that happened, I want the weekend to get over.

I just didn't-- didn't feel-- feel good.

Ross, nice, hot track temperatures today.

How are your cars running?

Pretty well.

Obviously, the problem of generating tyre temperature has gone away.

Valencia, European Grand Prix.

At that time,

I got to start practising on Friday

with higher fuel number.

I didn't want Jenson to pay attention on me.

I'm doing really well with my mental status,

and for me to finish behind him on Friday and Saturday morning,

it meant nothing, because I carry at least 10 kilos more fuel.

When I came to qualify, I was pretty fast.

-I believe 10 kilograms is three-tenths. -Exactly.

If I was within three-tenths, I knew we were on pair.

If I was only two-tenths behind him, I was in front.

Qualification: Rubens, P3. Jenson, P5.

In a sense, that's fine for you if McLaren finish 1-2 tomorrow.

That's absolutely perfect.

Well, maybe on paper, it may be,

but I could tell you Rubens will be pretty pissed off if they finish 1-2.

Uh, yeah. We're gonna go out there and try and beat them.

I mean, as you're all aware, Rubens hasn't won a race yet this year,

and his teammate's won six.

So, desperate to win a race, and we're gonna be very aggressive.

You can just start to feel

some of the tension that's starting to brew between the two drivers.

And you can see, Jenson is starting to tighten.

And we're almost ready to go.

Those red lights alight on the gantry.

They're out, and away goes Hamilton and Kovalainen.

Barrichello charges forward, and now Button comes on the inside.

Good start there by Räikkönen, who's up into fourth maybe.

This has been a shocking start by Jenson Button, the championship leader.

It all just fell apart.

The only bit of hope that I had… …it was gone.

Rubens got a great start,

and I saw him up the road, like, five places in front of me.

It's like, "Wow. Okay, I don't know how that just happened."

Hamilton stops, and Barrichello's through into the lead.

Rubens Barrichello

is running on rails towards that chequered flag.

Here he comes then.

He was a winner for Ferrari.

He's never done it for Brawn, but he has now!

For the first time in five years,

Rubens Barrichello is a winner in Formula 1!

It's your first win in five years.

Yes.

Uh, also that I remember, because it was the "a hundredth" win for Brazil.

It's an impressive number for-- for a country like that,

and for me to get the number "a hundredth" was, uh, was fantastic.

I wonder if we'll see a few tears on the podium.

He's quite an emotional man, is Rubens Barrichello.

And how popular is that? Look, as he goes down the pit lane,

how many people are applauding.

And there are Ferrari too.

They know him and they love him.

Everybody came out of their garage and applauded him.

And it almost makes me tearful now, thinking about it,

'cause it was such a wonderful gesture.

Is that a highlight of your career?

It's one of the highlights of my career, for sure.

And it was that race that Lewis came to me and say, "How did you do it?"

-And it-- -Really?

Yeah. Yeah, it was--

You know, to see a true champ like Hamilton, it was--

It made me feel special.

Wow, what a happy guy he is.

That is all for Felipe Massa,

and you can see the tears there.

…message he was sending to Felipe Massa.

It was the only race where I paint the top of my helmet with "Massa".

I was racing for him and for me.

And he won the race.

-And he won the race. -He won the race.

And he put even a little sticker, you know, like, honour it to me.

There he goes.

He never disappoints.

Rubens had a dream of a race.

Strategy worked, tyres worked,

and, bingo, we're back on the top of the podium again.

And it was really what the team needed.

I mean, after those difficult few races.

And, suddenly, Rubens started to look like a factor now.

You know, he's got the upper hand of Jenson,

and you're thinking, "Actually, can Rubens catch?"

And you can see him starting to believe in himself that,

"Maybe I can be the world champion."

Wow. So, that-- that side of the garage was feeling good.

Yeah. With Jenson, we had to-- we had to find some-- some solutions.

I didn't know what to think at this point of the season.

I was like, "Well, I'm-- I'm thinking about the championship,

but am I thinking too much about the championship?

Am I not thinking about race by race?

Not being aggressive enough?"

I definitely was not in a good place mentally.

I could feel the championship drifting away.

And this was everything to me.

Coming out of Valencia,

Virgin breaks the news

that they're not going to be moving forward with Brawn GP for the 2010 season.

Richard wanted a, sort of, complete sponsorship package,

but the numbers that Richard offered

were nowhere near what we thought would be realistic.

The $2-million deal became a hundred million dollars.

Generally speaking,

it's unlikely that a team is gonna have such an incredible streak

two times in a row, so you have to know when to step out of a deal.

We were a team hanging on by our fingernails.

We had this amazing start to the season, but we didn't know where we were going.

It was all very unstable.

We knew we had to do something.

I caught wind of the fact BMW were about to pull out of Formula 1.

BMW had a very significant sponsor,

the Malaysian part-state-owned oil company called PETRONAS.

I decided to get the very first plane the following morning to Kuala Lumpur.

They had no interest in a relationship with Brawn GP,

but the potential for a relationship to Mercedes-Benz

was a different kettle of fish.

We potentially had a very, very significant sponsor.

That then puts a significant amount of pressure

on doing a deal with Mercedes-Benz.

They knew your reputation,

but they had some conditions about results.

Quite frankly, the value of the company depended on where it finished.

We needed to keep winning or maintaining our position

on the Drivers' Championship standings to get the deal done.

That does bring added pressure.

You know that every move you make is gonna be critical.

This is the king of motor racing circuits,

here in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium.

The shortest name with the longest lap and the biggest reputation.

The Belgian Grand Prix, Race 12. Spa.

A circuit I love.

Probably, the best circuit in the world.

It's fast. It's flowing…

but it doesn't really suit our car.

And I remember just not being able to get any temperature into the tyres.

And it frustrated me so much, because I love Spa,

and I wanted to have a good result there.

But I didn't even get in the top ten.

I was 14th.

I mean, if my teammate was alongside me, it would've been, "Oh, it's the car."

But Rubens was P4 and I was P14.

I was ten places behind him.

I might as well have not gone out for qualifying.

You sensed he's starting to look over his shoulder and feel pressure.

Pressure is an incredible thing, makes people do things differently.

And-- And, I think, all around,

the pressure was starting to come on the team and the drivers of,

"Can we hold on to this?"

At this point, you've turned the page and you're thinking,

"Okay, could this be our chance to take on the Brawn guys and come out on top?"

Yeah, the key is now, with Jenson being quite a way back,

that we really do as much damage as possible this weekend

to keep the championship alive.

Jenson Button takes his place.

Worst qualifying of the season so far, down in 14th.

But it all depends on the start.

He has to get this start right.

Pressure was on.

We had to get a good start to have any chance of winning that race.

We were hanging on desperately.

And it was clear, if we wanna win, we've gotta throw all our chips in.

We've gotta go risky with what we do strategically.

We're away. Fisichella making a good start.

Look at Barrichello stopped there.

It's an awful start for Barrichello, but out comes Räikkönen.

I had a horrific race.

I did four corners before it went wrong.

Räikkönen on a charge now.

He's gone from sixth to second. Now he's hunting down Fisichella.

He's gone wide across the grass.

- There's a problem there! - He's been hit.

Going from bad to worse for Jenson Button.

He's seemingly out of the race now.

You know, if you're that far back on the grid,

you're in the middle of the pack,

you know, statistically, you're gonna have more chance of an accident

than if you're at the front disappearing.

Uh, and so, you know, you kind of make your own luck in some circumstances.

Jenson Button jumping over the tyre barrier,

and he is out of the race.

Dear me.

It was a weird race,

because I didn't finish for the first time,

and Rubens was in a position to score points.

So I had to watch that, just hoping Rubens wouldn't win.

So, Barrichello scoring at the moment.

Currently seventh.

One reliability problem,

one mistake by a team member,

one adjustment that's not been done properly,

and, suddenly, you're out of the race.

Now, look at this.

Some, uh, smoke coming out of the back of that Brawn.

Barrichello might just be lucky to get to the end of the race with that one.

With Jenson out of the race, we have to make it count now.

We didn't have the fastest car by that point anymore,

so I had to take a lot of risks in that race.

Here comes Kimi Räikkönen.

He's not won since 2008 in Spain, but he's done it for Ferrari in Belgium!

And it's third for Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull.

But what about Barrichello? Can he nurse this home?

Crawling as he goes, but he's just managed to take it.

He's got there in the end.

Barrichello takes seventh.

Crucial points for him.

Whilst we were very disappointed with Jenson's performance,

Seb not winning a race and Rubens scoring points was a relief of sorts.

Jenson obviously didn't finish the race.

When we spoke to him, he was keeping a keen eye on you.

How much rivalry is there between you two?

Uh, it's all right.

Like I said, I don't think there is a better word for saying

that we love each other off the track, but we hate each other when we're driving.

Rubens scored points, and, you know, you are happy for him,

because I really like the guy, but it massively hurts.

Jenson's nerves have lost him so many points in the last few races.

What's Jenson have to do in his own mind?

I think, any disappointing race,

a driver has to, sort of, go back and clear his mind.

And, um, whether it's fighting for a championship or not,

if you have a bad race, you're very frustrated.

And I'm exactly the same.

If we have a bad race, it takes me a few days to get over it.

I mean, you go through these difficult periods in racing,

and you have a few races when it just doesn't seem to come together

and it suddenly becomes so difficult.

Because, in a motor race, you only need one thing to happen

and that can be the end of it.

Brawn one and two.

They've done the first part right.

Now, the second part of this race ahead of them.

Monza was interesting for me,

because, I believe, Ross, at this point, had said,

"I don't mind which one of them wins."

They're free to race.

The team need to win the Constructors' Championship.

Did drivers give a fuck about the Constructors' Championship?

Team bosses really care most about the Constructors' title.

And the drivers care most about the Drivers' title.

Rubens was in front, and he was a tiny bit quicker every lap.

Rubens is wringing the neck of that Brawn, I'll tell you.

He left nothing to spare through Lesmo one and two.

And he's pushing for all he's worth.

Remember, 16 points between Barrichello and Button,

going into this race with 50 still to play with.

I felt good about the race track.

You know, I felt good about everything,

because I was fighting for the championship.

I knew I could do it.

They're trading blows at Brawn.

There's nothing between them.

It got towards the end of the race,

and the gap was pretty steady between us, and I knew I couldn't catch him.

I remember I actually got angry about it.

The flag falls.

The Brawn team has scored a 1-2 victory.

What a way to come back!

Brawn on top of the podium.

And Rubens Barrichello is firmly in the championship picture.

Jock, well done.

Is that a little emotion I see in your eyes?

Oh, absolutely, Ted. Absolutely.

I mean, basically the last 52 laps of that race were just hell for me,

just praying that it was gonna hold together and--

Ah, what a brilliant, brilliant weekend and great for the team,

and Rubens is just flying at the moment.

We got on the podium.

A P1 and a P2, but he's obviously done a better job.

You know, I felt like I'd maximised the car,

but he's obviously done a better job.

Honestly, there's nothing worse than losing to your teammate.

You would rather lose to the Ferrari.

You'd rather lose to the Red Bull than you would to your teammate.

And anybody that tells you otherwise is lying.

You get in the garage,

and there seems to be a little issue about sharing information.

That the race engineers, in terms of the set-up of the car,

had done differently for their drivers.

Do you know this story at all?

Yeah, very well… …'cause I had to unravel it.

Italy, for me, was memorable, because it was the only time

that we really fell out across the engineering table effectively.

Did Jock talk about Cambergate?

-He did. -Oh.

Sneaky little fucker.

Camber refers to the angle of the tyres on the car,

allowing for more rubber to make contact with the road in the corners.

This is adjusted before each race,

to best suit the characteristics of a particular race track,

with the aim of gaining maximum grip and speed.

Bridgestone had brought in a camber limit.

So they said, "You can't run more than a certain amount."

And Rubens was over this limit.

What advantage would that give you?

It gives you more grip, really.

It better distributes the load when the car is cornering.

And Jenson, in the final corner, lost a bit of time to Rubens

because he had a bit less stability.

And, probably, I went off down the rabbit hole a bit saying,

"If it wasn't for this, we would've been ahead."

You have the ability to look at, maybe,

up to 15,000 bits of data coming off the car.

But one of the cardinal rules, is that the engineers share information.

And it was suspected, but they weren't gonna admit it,

that they were hiding data.

The bottom line is, we had a bit more rear camber than they did.

Jenson got to hear about it and kicked off massively,

which then escalated it to Ross's level,

and Ross had to sit down and say, "What's going on here?

You're probably taking it a bit too far."

So he wrapped my knuckles a bit.

If Jock is your engineer, he's great.

But if he's on the other side of the garage, Jock is a nightmare.

That's when we really got under Jenson's skin there.

There was still a lot to play for, and that was actually quite enjoyable,

because you thought, "Yeah, Jenson is actually worried about us now."

If he's worried about that eighth of a degree of rear camber,

he is worried about what Rubens might be able to do

in the next few races to eat into his lead.

Singapore is such a long race for the drivers.

Qualifying was everything.

Your grid position would set the tone for the following day.

Rubens, is this the closest that you've come

in all your years racing

to actually being able to get your hands onto this championship?

Yes, it is.

It's been tough, with Jenson winning the six races at the beginning

and all the pressure and everything,

but I have to keep it calm.

Breathe.

I was coming out of Monza with a win.

Again, I had my second win

in the time that we didn't have the best car in the paddock.

So, it was a high moment for me.

Lewis, this time last year, he was in a similar position to you.

He was a bit more cautious, because he had a lead to protect.

Does that enter into your mind at all?

Um…

It works for Rubens as well.

You know, he's the guy that's gotta catch me.

Here's the championship leader.

Fourteen points clear of Rubens Barrichello.

Needs a clear head. A cool head.

A lot of pressure on Jenson Button now.

Jenson wasn't having a good day.

For him, the car feels like it's falling apart.

But all that is, is that you're now trying to drive it faster than it wants to go.

The car hasn't got that bad.

What's got bad is what's going on in your head.

What the heck's going on?

- What the heck is going on? - Is it just the tyres?

I think I was overdriving the car.

You know, I wasn't driving with my normal style.

I'd brake a little bit late or get on the throttle a little early

to try and make up time, but, like, I always just went slower.

You know, it just didn't work for me.

There's Vettel again.

Setting the fastest time through the first sector.

Jenson was feeling the pressure.

I wasn't.

I was just on a roll.

He's really hustling that Brawn, far harder than Button.

This is looking mighty.

That wasn't good, because I would have qualified even higher.

And the overconfident Rubens didn't-- didn't bring, uh, dividends.

This weekend may change the complexion of the title race.

Webber and Vettel through, but look at that name in P12.

Jenson Button.

I remember finishing my lap and then being told my position.

But that feeling

of just not doing the job I was supposed to do in qualifying really hurt,

and I was embarrassed.

I felt that the whole world was watching me and watching me fail.

Time and miles running out for Jenson Button.

The wheels are coming off Jenson's championship crusade here.

The pack have caught up.

They've no longer got a dominant car. They've not even now got the fastest car.

Dropped right off Vettel.

Nine seconds back almost.

It is now a question of surviving the rest of the season.

Lewis Hamilton wins for McLaren in Singapore.

Sebastian Vettel in fourth, but where are the Brawns?

- Rubens, P6. Jenson, P5. - Yep.

We scored some points.

That was a relief.

Everybody was counting down the races till the end of the season.

It was a very uncomfortable atmosphere,

because we were scared that we were losing this championship.