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Jenson Button had no peer in Monte Carlo on Sunday afternoon. The world championship points leader snatched another full score as he grabbed the lead at the start, eased quickly away from Brawn team mate Rubens Barrichello, and romped home to a comfortable and totally convincing victory.

"Great job! Fantastic job!" his engineers cried over the radio at the end, as the 29 year-old Englishman whooped and hollered with delight.

There was not a single moment when he ever looked like losing this one, as he stretched his points score to 51, and his lead to 16 over Barrichello. His only error came following the chequered flag when, in his jubilation, he parked his car in the wrong parc ferme area and had to jog all the way to the podium like the triathlon runner he is. It was a pluperfect performance.

Barrichello kept his end up and reduced Buttons 12s lead to 7.6s in the closing stages, and he in turn was well clear of the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen which he had beaten off the start line and stayed ahead of apart from during the pit stops. Felipe Massa made it a good day for the Scuderia by keeping his F60 ahead of hard-charging Mark Webber in the sole surviving Red Bull as they battled for fourth place a couple of seconds behind the Finn.

Nico Rosberg had a feisty run to sixth for Williams, ahead of Renault's Fernando Alonso. Sebastien Bourdais took the final point for eighth place for Toro Rosso, just ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella's Force India after a race-long fight.

In Button's wake it was not a classic race. Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel held fourth place early on until getting outfoxed by Massa and Rosberg, and after an early pit stop the German crashed at Ste Devote on Lap 15.

Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi blotted his copybook by running into the rear of Nelson Piquet's Renault there on Lap 11, both retiring. Heikki Kovalainen also crashed, dropping his McLaren in the Swimming Pool, in a very similar fashion to Massa in qualifying - only harder. It lost him seventh place on Lap 52. Late in the race Kazuki Nakajima lost tenth after nosing into the tyres at Mirabeau.

Timo Glock was thus tenth for Toyota, after a very long first stint which took him through to Lap 57 before he refuelled. He was followed by BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld, who was hounded to the flag by an unhappy Lewis Hamilton, who had earlier damaged his McLaren in a brush with the German at Ste Devote on the tenth lap. Nothing could have been a greater contrast for Hamilton with the 2008 race, and likewise for Button.

Behind the McLaren came Toyota's Jarno Trulli, whom Hamilton passed on Lap 75, and Adrian Sutil's Force India. BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica made a poor start, and was the first pit stopper before later retiring with mechanical gremlins.

source: www.formula1.com