April 19, 2009 Red Bull Racing finally took its maiden Formula One victory in a rain-soaked Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai today. German prodigy Sebastian Vettel took his second career win in the wet (he won in the rain at Monza last year for the other Red Bull Team, Torro Rosso), followed home by team mate Mark Webber to give the team a 1-2 finish. Only three cars elected to use the KERS hybrid systems after Ferrari, Renault and one BMW car dropped the system for the race.
Brawn drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello finished in third and fourth respectively, maintaining the constructor points lead and their individual places at the top of the driver points. Surprisingly, the Red Bull 1-2 catapulted Vettel and Webber into third and fifth place in the driver points table, and Red Bull has leapfrogged everyone but Brawn in the constructors points.
McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton were fifth and sixth, the only cars to run the KERS system in the race, along with BMW's Nick Heidfeld.
Ferrari announced last week it would not be running KERS in Shanghai, ironically to overcome reliability problems – Felipe Massa's Ferrari stopped mid-race nontheless, costing the team another likely podium. Both Renault drivers and BMW's Robert Kubica also elected to drop the KERS system from their cars after evaluating the sytem during Friday's practice.
