page_title: 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
section_title: Race
hierarchical_section_title: 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix / Report / Race
caption_attribution_description: English: Kamui Kobayashi Toyota TF109 on Saturday at 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Русский: Камуи Кобаяси на Тойоте TF109 в субботу на Гран-при Абу-Даби 2009 года
context_page_description: The 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was the seventeenth and final Formula One motor race of the 2009 Formula One season. It took place on 1 November 2009 at the 3.45-mile Hermann Tilke-designed Yas Marina Circuit. It was the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and also the first ever day-night Grand Prix. The race was won by Sebastian Vettel for Red Bull, with polesitter Lewis Hamilton having retired due to a brake failure. This would be the last Formula One race for Kazuki Nakajima and Giancarlo Fisichella and the Brawn GP, BMW Sauber and Toyota teams.
context_section_description: Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber gave Red Bull their fourth one-two finish of the season, with Vettel finishing seventeen seconds ahead of his teammate.
  Lewis Hamilton led the race from the start, but did not open a singularly impressive lead as was expected, and Vettel stayed within a few seconds of him during the early phase of the race. There was contact between Rubens Barrichello and Webber in the first corner, with Barrichello losing a part of his front wing, which hurt his pace to begin with. The first lap was otherwise clean.
  Vettel leap-frogged Hamilton during the first round of stops before the McLaren pit wall reported that Hamilton had a problem with his right-rear brake. Hamilton was forced to retire the car after eighteen laps, as it was unsafe to continue given that the circuit contained three very large braking areas. It was briefly suggested that the problem may have been a faulty data logger that was showing a problem, but McLaren was still obliged to retire the car. The only other retirement of the race was Jaime Alguersuari during the pit stops. His in-lap had been slow and he made the mistake of pulling up in the Red Bull pit instead of the Toro Rosso garages. With Sebastian Vettel due in that lap, Red Bull were forced to send him back out. Alguersuari later claimed that when he was ready for the stop, his team were not. The Red Bull and Toro Rosso garages were located next to one another, with the pit crews in similar uniforms. Alguersuari retired when he returned to the circuit.
  From there, the race remained relatively incident-free. Jenson Button exited from his stop to find the Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi, who was running on a one-stop strategy. Button, in a heavier car and with tyres that would take several laps to break in, was powerless to stop Kobayashi from simply driving around the outside of him at the giant hairpin at one end of the circuit. Kobayashi would run as high as third during the race before his stop, and would ultimately finish sixth, collecting three World Championship points in only his second race. His performance in Brazil and Abu Dhabi in particular impressed Toyota's management enough for him to be seriously considered for a full-time race seat in 2010 (although it subsequently transpired that Toyota withdrew from Formula One before the start of the 2010 season). Fellow Japanese driver Kazuki Nakajima finished in thirteenth, making him the only driver to race in every Grand Prix of the season without scoring a single point.
  Elsewhere, Giancarlo Fisichella was given a drive-through penalty and finished his final race for Ferrari a lowly sixteenth, ahead of only Adrian Sutil and Romain Grosjean. Ferrari teammate Kimi Räikkönen – in the final race for his first stint at the Maranello-based outfit, before his return at the 2014 Australian Grand Prix – had a similar struggle from eleventh on the grid, finishing down in twelfth behind fellow Finn Heikki Kovalainen. Ferrari's failure to score points meant that the team conceded third place in the Constructors' championship, closing their worst season since Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger drove for them in 1993.
  The final few laps saw Jenson Button begin to rapidly reel in the second-placed Mark Webber, whose rear tyres were steadily beginning to lose grip. Button caught up with him with six laps to go, and the final lap was one of the hardest-fought of the season. Both drivers made an error going into the chicane and hairpin, and while Button attempted to make a move on Webber going down the back straight, the Australian defended his line into the switchback. The move meant that Button had the racing line and came out of the ninth corner nose-to-tail with the Red Bull. Button drew alongside Webber in the run down to the bottom corner, forcing Webber to take a defensive line again, but the Red Bull driver held his line and managed to pull the car up in time and held on for second place despite a minor error at turn fourteen.
  At the front of the field, Sebastian Vettel won the race by seventeen seconds, securing the runner-up position i
caption: Kamui Kobayashi scored points in his second Formula One race.
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