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The last time Formula One racing provided a story containing a whiff of romance it involved the man who runs it.
But for its heart-warming qualities, the result of Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix clearly surpassed Max Mosley’s notorious bondage episode.
In a sport known more for massive excesses than for glorious resurrections, the performance of the Brawn GP team and its drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello in the opening race of the season are almost unprecedented.
Button, a 29-year-old Englishman with a wispy beard and a record before Sunday of 153 Formula One races for one win, won the Melbourne race thanks largely to his own perseverance and the faith of his team.
Button had tried his luck with four teams over seven seasons before finishing up, somewhat controversially, in a car that had risen last year from the ashes of Honda’s ill-fated venture into F1.
Honda pulled out in December and its racing boss Ross Brawn led a buyout of the hardware.
Despite the misgivings of many in the sport, he retained the unspectacular Button and fellow veteran driver Barrichello.
Where the Hondas had failed miserably in 2008, the newly-branded cars set the track alight in testing, causing despondency and resignation among rivals.
Sir Frank Williams said his team might as well stay home if the Brawn cars produced in races what they had shown during winter and the McLaren team of reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton was similarly discouraged.
By the time the F1 circus reached Melbourne for the first GP of the year, concern had given way to protests and the Brawn cars were investigated for supposed breaches of technical rules.
An inquiry in the days before the race cleared them of any breach and they took to the track in qualifying, reproducing the form shown in practice.
Button qualified fastest and Barrichello was his closest rival.
On race day, Button repeated the effort, driving straight to the front and staying there for 300 kilometres.
Barrichello bungled the start, but added a touch more colour to the story by weaving through the field to finish second.
The result also provided nostalgic comparison that recalled the days when the men who drove F1 cars had to do all the work themselves.
The Brawn quinella is the first by a team making its F1 debut since the Maestro, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Karl Kling finished one-two for Mercedes in Paris in 1954.
Button, whose only previous GP win came in a Honda in 2006, collected more points in Sunday’s race than he had in the previous two seasons.
“That’s rubbish, isn’t it,” he said.
“Bloody rubbish.”
But there were excuses.
The Hondas, he said, were “beasts”.
“Every corner we got to, we didn’t know what would happen,” he said.
With a couple of exceptions when Barrichello was shoving his way through the pack, it was the opposite.
The new, Mercedes-powered Brawn cars, did exactly what their drivers wanted and expected.
The sort of thing which would no doubt delight Mr Mosley.
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