Button masters Monaco for fifth win in six

By Alan Baldwin

MONACO (Reuters) - Formula One championship leader Jenson Button mastered Monaco's treacherous streets on Sunday to chalk up his fifth victory in six races and lead another Brawn GP one-two finish.

The Briton's sixth career victory, in an untroubled drive from pole position on a sunny afternoon, stretched his lead over team mate Rubens Barrichello to 16 points with 11 races remaining.

Button, who took the chequered flag 7.6 seconds clear of the Brazilian after a masterfully smooth performance around a bumpy and twisting track lined by metal barriers, has 51 while Barrichello has 35.

"Yeah, Monaco baby, yeah," the local resident, who had laboured among the back markers in recent years with an uncompetitive Honda, yelled over the team radio after his third win in a row.

The only mistake he made, after 78 laps at the wheel, was to park his car in the wrong place after taking the chequered flag.

Astonishingly, considering what he had gone through during the previous hour and 45 minutes, he climbed out of the car and ran along the straight from the pit lane, waving at the fans and jumping for joy.

Finland's Kimi Raikkonen, who had started on the front row but lost out to Barrichello at the start, took third place for champions Ferrari in the Italian team's first podium finish since the last race of 2008.

Mercedes-powered Brawn, heirs to departed Honda, have now finished one-two three times in the most astonishing debut season the championship has witnessed in 60 years of competition.