Jenson Button took a memorable Monaco Grand Prix win this afternoon in the Principality, dominating yet another race to extend his championship advantage to 16 points. The Briton ended the 78-lap race just 7 seconds clear of team-mate Rubens Barrichello in the team's second one-two in a row, having earlier held a 17-second cushion.

From the start, a perfect getaway saw Button lead into turn one from pole, with Rubens Barrichello again starting well to jump Kimi Räikkönen and take second place. With both Brawns starting on the super-soft tyre and Räikkönen starting on the soft, Button and Barrichello were expected to struggle with tyre wear early in the race, and although Barrichello began losing considerable amounts of time from lap 11 onwards, Button was able to keep a stead pace and easily pull out a gap.

Although Räikkönen was on the more favourable soft tyre, he was unable to find a way by the struggling Barrichello, and pitted for a fresh set of rubber on lap 15, soon followed by his Brazilian rival. Brawn's quick reaction to Kimi's stop ensured Barrichello stayed ahead of the Finn, all but securing second as the Ferrari driver had yet to take on a set of the super-softs.

Behind the top three, Sebastian Vettel was another driver to suffer hugely with the underperforming super-softs. Vettel's pace began to drop after just six laps, and soon began losing as much as four seconds per lap to Button, thereby developing a train of cars all being cost laptime. After a failed attempt by Felipe Massa to get by on lap 7 (which cost him a place to Nico Rosberg), the pressure finally told for Vettel on lap 10 when Rosberg squeezed by at the Nouvelle chicane, followed seconds later by Massa, Kovalainen and Webber.

After clearing the ailing Red Bull, Rosberg and Massa began pulling away from their rivals. Rosberg was the first of the pair to pit on lap 18, with Massa stopping two laps later and leapfrogging the German for fourth. Rosberg lost another place to Mark Webber, dropping him to sixth, where he stayed until the flag fell. Massa and Webber meanwhile also failed to progress higher than 4th and 5th, as the narrow confines of Monte-Carlo resulted in a pedestrian latter half of the race.

Renault's Fernando Alonso drove strongly to take seventh place after earlier being held up by the one-stopping Fisichella, while Toro Rosso's Sébastien Bourdais rose from 14th on the grid to take eighth and the final point thanks to a one-stop strategy. Narrowly missing out on his team's first point was Giancarlo Fisichella. The Italian lost two crucial places at the start, before a well-executed one-stop strategy elevated him to ninth.

Over the course of the race, just five drivers failed to finish due to crashes, with Sebastian Vettel, Heikki Kovalainen and Kazuki Nakajima going off on their own accord. Sébastien Buemi and Nelson Piquet collided early in the race putting both out of the running after Buemi missed his braking point for turn 1 sending him into the back of the Renault. Robert Kubica was the sixth and final retiree having parked his BMW with brake problems after 28 laps.