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'Terrible start' hinders Button

Championship leader Jenson Button finished off the podium for the first time this year at Silverstone. Ironically, as his worst result so far this season came in his home country, the Englishman's Brawn was already on a damage limitation exercise when it made a bad start to sink three positions at the beginning of the race, eventually using pit-stops to recover to sixth.

Being outqualified and outraced by team-mate Rubens Barrichello for the first time this year, Silverstone 2009 proved to be a race on the difficult side for Jenson Button, who spent much of the afternoon in eighth place. "I got a terrible start," admitted Jenson. "Jarno Trulli, in front of me, got a really slow getaway, as they (Toyota) normally do, and I had nowhere to go." As the Brawn was boxed, Kimi Räikkönen was just one man to take advantage when shooting through on the outside on the run to Copse.

For the first time, Button arrived at Silverstone as championship leader

"I tried to go to the inside, but that wasn't there, and I tried to go to the outside and that was full, and then everyone shot by me on the outside," Button recalled. "Behind Trulli in the first stint, I slowed up behind him to give myself some clear air and see what times I could do, and I was eight tenths to a second quicker. There's just nowhere to pass on this circuit. Then, on the hard tyres, the car just didn't work and I couldn't get any tyre temperature - that's the way our car is in cooler temperatures. On the soft rubber near the end I was able to close in on Nico Rosberg and Felipe Massa like they were standing still, but you still can't pass around here."

Heading to Germany in three weeks' time, Button's championship lead has been cut to 23 points to team-mate Rubens Barrichello and 24 to British Grand Prix winner Sebastian Vettel.

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