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Italian GP. Race Report. Rubens Barrichello took his second win of the season to further trim his team mate's championship lead at the Italian Grand Prix, while polesitter Lewis Hamilton threw away a podium finish by conspiring to crash his McLaren on the last lap.

This was a race of many things, but by and large, none of those things were entertainment. Though the action on the track was thin on the ground, it was a race weekend that saw Rubens Barrichello further boost his championship ambitions, and saw the Red Bull challenge crumble. Mark Webber didn't last a lap, after Robert Kubica bunted him off at the second chicane, while Sebastian Vettel had a dreary afternoon littered with mistakes, and managed just a single point.

And while the caffeinated team was failing, Brawn found themselves right back at the front. The two Brawn cars waited patiently for the front three two-stopping cars to clear out of the way, and then romped home to a comfortable 1-2 finish, with Button picking up his first podium since he won the Turkish GP in the process.

From the start, Lewis Hamilton kept a fast-starting Kimi Raikkonen behind by easing him onto the grass, and assumed the lead of the race, ahead of the Finn and Adrian Sutil, who only lost one place to the KERS gang off the line in his Force India. Barrichello made his first decent start in ages to jump to 4th, while Button eased past the heavy and useless Heikki Kovalainen into the first Lesmo corner on the opening tour, to keep himself stuck right to the back of his team mate.

From there, Hamilton extended a big lead over the rest of the field, but was unable to gap the one-stopping Brawns to a good-enough extent. When the front three light cars pitted for their first stops, Barrichello and Brawn took their places at the head of the field.

Any hopes Button had of beating his team mate during the pit stop window was always an unlikely hope, with his car being one lap lighter than the Brazilian. And Barrichello comfortably stayed ahead of his team mate as they made their stops.

Then, they simply needed to keep their pace up and wait for the inevitable stops ahead of them. None of Hamilton, Sutil or Raikkonen has a sufficiently long middle stint to have the time to gap the Brawns, and they all slipped back behind when they stopped for the final time. Raikkonen jumping out of his pit box too early and Sutil colliding with a couple of his engineers during their respective stops didn't help matters.

So Barrichello was left to coast to victory, with Button unable to close the gap to his team mate. The championship leader was put under pressure by the charging Hamilton, who for a while looked to be in with a chance of passing the Brawn, before he got stuck in the dreaded "dirty air" of Button's car. The outgoing champion kept pushing to the very end though, perhaps pushing a little too much, as he hooked a wheel on the kerb on the exit of the first Lesmo and spun into the inside barrier. His podium hopes were over in amusing circumstances, and his crash ended any hope of any late-race shenanigans, as the race officially ended under a safety car period, even if the cars didn't have time to catch the safety car before they took the chequered flag.

Barrichello and Button celebrated their 1-2, then, with Button's championship lead now down to 14 points over his team mate. After the race, though, Button seemed fairly happy about the situation, pointing out that today had seen Red Bull fall out of the equation. Vettel is now 26 points behind Button, and Webber 29.5 adrift, with only 40 left to fight for. Mathematically, they are still in the chase, but in reality, we have an internecine Brawn tussle for the championship.

Behind the Brawns, Raikkonen inherited the final podium place after Hamilton's crash, giving the mental Tifosi fans something to cheer blithely at. Adrian Sutil followed in Giancarlo Fisichella's footsteps from Belgium, having followed in Kimi's wake all the way to the line, to pick up his first ever F1 points.

Renault man Fernando Alonso finished 5th, having used the extra boost of the KERS device on his car to be a little bit more competitive than usual, with the disappointing Heikki Kovalainen following him home in 6th. Nick Heidfeld's BMW and Vettel's Red Bull completed the points places.

Fisichella finished his first race for Ferrari in an anonymous ninth, missing out on points, but at least putting in a far more competent performance than Luca Badoer had managed in the same car. Kazuki Nakajima completed the top ten. The two Toyotas had awful races, but at least gave us some entertainment in the closing stages with a long side-by-side battle for a lowly finishing position. Timo Glock got 11th after Hamilton's crash, while Jarno Trulli ended down in 14th.

Nico Rosberg saw his run of points finishes end. The Williams man started down in 18th, and pitted almost immediately with a suspected puncture. He dropped to the back of the field and ended up dead last, two laps down. A dismal weekend for both driver and team.

The retirees, along with Webber, included Tonio Liuzzi, who pulled off with mechanical problems after looking set for a decent points finish on debut for Force India, and Robert Kubica, who had to pit to fix a damaged nosecone, and then simply gave up to conserve his limited engine allocation for the rest of the season.

So, Monza saw the likely end of the Red Bull dream for this season, and saw the Brawn GP team return to form in style. The main issue for the rest of the season is whether Barrichello can shave away the rest of Button's lead over the course of the next four races.

The fight to be the greater Boobens begins here and now.

Drivers Championship Standings -
1 Button 80pts, 2 Barrichello 66pts, 3 Vettel 54pts, 4 Webber 51.5pts, 5 Raikkonen 40pts, 6 Rosberg 30.5pts, 7 Hamilton 27pts, 8 Trulli 22.5pts, 9 Massa 22pts, 10 Alonso, Kovalainen 20pts, 12 Glock 16pts, 13 Heidfeld 12pts, 14 Kubica, Fisichella 8pts, 16 Sutil 5pts, 17 Buemi 3pts, 18 Sebastien Bourdais 2pts.

Constructors Championship Standings -
1 Brawn-Mercedes 146pts, 2 Red Bull-Renault 105.5pts, 3 Ferrari 62pts, 4 McLaren-Mercedes 47pts, 5 Toyota 38.5pts, 6 Williams-Toyota 30.5pts, 7 BMW Sauber, Renault 20pts, 9 Force India-Mercedes 13pts, 10 Toro Rosso-Ferrari 5pts.