MOTOR SPORT:FORMULA ONE is an environment that rarely embraces fairytale results.

Predicated on precision and the kind of performance-driven ruthlessness that sees drivers and teams discarded like worn out clothes, it lacks the kind of heart that allows for sentimental victory to be spun from the ashes of defeat. Yesterday it relented.

Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, drivers so recently sacrificed on the altar of more successful and younger rivals, delivered a stunning one-two victory at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix for Brawn GP, a team that two months ago simply did not exist.

Born from the ashes of a Honda team abandoned by its parent company in December, Brawn arrived into the sport with, from the outside, little or no hope of competitiveness. It was simply too late in the day for a team to mate a chassis designed for a Honda powerplant to a new Mercedes customer engine. The mechanics of it just wouldn’t add up.

The reality was different. The team arrived in Melbourne as the team to beat, a single lightning-quick pre-season test confirming that the car was more than a contender, it was favourite. And qualifying confirmed it. Button on pole, shadowed by Barrichello, the rest scrambling to keep pace.

Button, without a win since a maiden victory in Hungary three years ago, wasn’t going to let the opportunity go.

From the start yesterday the former Honda driver controlled events and despite a flat-spotted tyre early on and a botched pit stop late in the race he was unchallenged throughout. Only Sebastian Vettel, who joined Red Bull Racing’s sister outfit Toro Rosso this season, was able to keep pace with the Brawn GP car. But while the German shadowed Button throughout he was unable to close and late on suddenly had to contend with a challenge from BMW-Sauber’s Robert Kubica. Three laps from home the pair tangled as Kubica made his move. The result was both cars in the wall and Vettel later adjudged to have caused an avoidable accident which will earn him a 10-place grid penalty at next weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

That accident allowed Barrichello to slip back into second place, a finish that looked impossible after a poor start saw the Brazilian’s anti-stall mechanism engaged leaving him momentarily stranded. When he did recover his approach to the first corner was ambitious, attempting to cut down the inside of Mark Webber’s Red Bull.

But the move was never completed, Barrichello being hit from behind by the McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen, a collision which slammed the Brawn GP into the side of Webber’s car. More was to come. Barrichello later collided with Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari and admitted that he was fortunate to have scrambled through to the podium to complete, under the safety car, the first one-two for a debutant team since Juan Manuel Fangio led home Karl Kling to give Mercedes victory at the French Grand Prix in 1954.

“For me I never thought I could finish on the podium after the start when I hit anti-stall and the car went into neutral,” Barrichello said. “I had a lot of mixed emotions, but it was fantastic.”

The celebrations could be brief, however. At the start of the weekend, Ferrari, Red Bull Racing and Renault protested to the FIA that elements of the cars of Brawn, Toyota and Williams contravened the regulations. Despite the protests being thrown out, the teams appealed and yesterday’s result will now have to wait until an FIA court of appeal convenes in Paris on April 14th for confirmation.

If it was a dramatic afternoon for Brawn, it was no less so for others, especially Toyota’s Jarno Trulli. Vettel’s collision with Kubica not only allowed Barrichello through but propelled Trulli to third, a remarkable result after both Toyotas had been sent to the back of the grid after they were found to be running an illegal rear wing.

The Italian’s joy was short-lived however. Two hours after the end of the race, Trulli was penalised 25 seconds for overtaking in the safety car period that closed the race, a punishment that dropped the Toyota driver to 13th and handing an unlikely third place podium finish to Lewis Hamilton.