Question: Jenson, I’m sure a lot of memories of this circuit. It’s where you scored your first point, for example, and where you sealed the World Championship.
Jenson Button: Yes. Lots of very positive memories, so it’s great to be back. For me, the memory that really stands out is obviously 2009. Winning your first point means something but winning the Championship means a lot more, so clinching the title here with a race to go was the perfect way to win the World Championship. It wasn’t an easy weekend for me obviously, with terrible [time in] qualifying but a great race and a fighting race, which I really enjoyed. So, some very special memories and hopefully this race will be special as well. I’ve only been on the podium here once. I’d like to stand on the podium again.
Question: And that came all the way from 14th on the grid as well…
Jenson Button: Yeah, I think my best qualifying [here] for the last six years has been 14th on the grid so I’m hoping to go a little bit better than that this time.
Question: Also, there’s second in the Championship up for grabs, how important is that?
Jenson Button: Not so important I suppose. I think it’s nice to know over a season you can finish in front of obviously some very good drivers but also some teams. To finish in front of a Red Bull would be great, considering that Sebastian’s won the championship in a Red Bull. And Fernando has obviously been very strong in the Ferrari so, if I get the chance to beat them at the end of the season in terms of points, yeah, of course I’ll be happy but as we all say, we’d rather come away from here with a victory, that means more to us than finishing second in the Championship - but it’s still nice, I suppose, if you can come away with second.
Question: You’ve almost had a better Championship season than when you won the World Championship. Particularly the second half.
Jenson Button: I don’t think that’s ever the case really if you haven’t won the World Championship. The second half of the season in ’09 was pretty tough but it’s a very different situation now. The Championship’s won: we can have a lot of fun this weekend and, looking back on 2011, yeah, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve achieved. We haven’t been quite good enough to win the Championship but I think we’ve had a pretty strong year and hopefully we can build on what we’ve achieved this year, next year and really take the fight to Red Bull.
Question: Jenson, when you joined McLaren, you talked about the challenge of taking on Lewis in the same team, and since then you’ve talked about him being one of the fastest drivers there’s ever been, so what does it mean to you to finish ahead of him over a season?
Jenson Button: You would think I would have a good answer for this by now; I’ve been asked it enough times. When you’re working closely with a teammate, when you’re off the track you’re sharing everything, trying to make the car go quicker and trying to improve your performance compared to other teams, which is the way it should be. But when you’re on the circuit, you obviously both want to get the best out of the car, which means beating your teammate is necessary. I think if we’re fighting for the World Championship and one of us came out on top it would be a very special feeling but we’re not in that position right now but for me, I’m happy with what I’ve achieved this year in terms of getting the best out of the car and getting some reasonably good performance. For me, Japan really stands out as being a great race, but also some other races that we haven’t been able to win, so I take more comfort from just the results I’ve got out of…on a race weekend, and also how I’ve felt that I’ve done over a race weekend. It’s not so much about whether you beat your teammate over a whole season, because so many things can happen: reliability issues, incidents that maybe aren’t your fault. I think if you clinch the title, as you said, it makes a big big difference, but when you’re fighting for second it’s not quite the same.
Question: What are your impressions of the rule changes to improve racing this year? Do you think it’s had a positive impact, as the season comes to an end?
Jenson Button: Personally, I think it’s brought a lot to the racing. You obviously have races where you think it’s too easy to overtake, there are always going to be negatives to something like that, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives and I think we’ve had some great racing this season on circuits where we’ve never had overtaking before, especially with two competitive cars, you can have a bit more of a fight now. Even if it doesn’t make the pass for you, it can bring you a lot closer so that you can have a go elsewhere on the circuit. I think DRS on its own is good but personally I feel that having KERS has really helped us this year. I think we can really use it to our advantage, to overtake and obviously to try and block a position, so that, for me, has been as big as DRS.
Question: Now that we have a whole season under our belts of racing on the Pirelli rubber, I was wondering if you could tell us what effect you think that’s had on overtaking as opposed to KERS and DRS?
Jenson Button: Yes, I think it has helped. I think that at the start of the season, especially, when we were trying to work out what the tyres were like and how many laps they would run and what the degradation was like, I think there was a lot of overtaking. Some of it came from looking after the tyres but also a lot of it came from people pitting, coming back out onto the circuit and being two or three seconds quicker than other cars. It seems a little bit different now, the degradation of the tyre doesn’t seem to be as high, it doesn’t seem to drop off a cliff like it did earlier this year. Maybe that’s just our car, I don’t know, but that’s the way it seems. It seems that they are more conservative with the choice of tyres towards the end of the season, meaning that the degradation is lower and I think that that will be the case here also. I personally liked it at the start of the year when we had a lot of degradation, I thought that was more fun but personally I feel that Pirelli’s done a great job this year. To come into Formula One… you know you can’t hide coming into Formula One. I think that they’ve done a great job, they’ve definitely been a part of the action this year. There’s been a lot of great overtaking and some of it does come down to tyres. So yeah, I think KERS, DRS and the Pirelli tyres have all worked very well together. We’ve just got to hope that it doesn’t change too much next year.
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