Question: Jenson, second here last year. What are your feelings coming here? You’re with a different team but are you fairly confident?
Jenson Button: I think if you look at Spa our car works very well in low downforce. It is an efficient car, so there is no reason we won’t be competitive here. We should be fighting at the front and everything points towards that.
Question: You didn’t have a very good second half of the championship last year. Are you feeling generally speaking more confident?
Jenson Button: There are team situations for different individuals and also for different teams. At the moment I feel we are in a strong position. The car is working very well. We had a couple of tougher races where we weren’t quite as competitive as a couple of the other top teams. But if you look at Spa there was nothing quicker than our car. The team have done a great job of improving the car. Some of it is because of the improvements. The other side of it I think is also because of the lower downforce circuits. We are efficient in these sorts of circuits. They suit our car, so I am positive for the rest of the season. This is one where we are very low downforce and then we go to a circuit where you are putting the downforce back on, so it is a big, big change. But we have improved the car a lot and we have had a lot of time to improve the car since before the break where we had a higher downforce circuit, so we go to Singapore positive that we will still be competitive. We are not fearing anything at the moment but we do know that this circuit is a very good circuit for us.
Question: We have seen Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber easing away in the championship. There is a little bit of a gap now between the chasing three behind. What are your feelings about the world championship at this stage?
Jenson Button: It is amazing how much talk there is about the difference at the front back to fourth place or back to third place. That talk has only been for two weeks as it has only been one race that has changed the championship if you like. It can easily go around the other way. We have got six races to go, so it only needs one race really for the leaders to have a bad race. Realistically sat here now I don’t think that we need the leaders to have an incident or to not score or to have a reliability issue. We know there are still a lot of possibilities and it is necessary to be fighting for a win at every race we go to, but that is my aim.
Question: What did you think of the World Council’s findings?
Jenson Button: It’s obviously not down to us. Our opinion doesn’t really matter in this situation. The decision is down to the FIA and the governing body, and the important thing is that we get a clarification of the rule, so we will understand and we are all working towards the same regulations and working with the same regulations and that’s key.
Question: Jenson, do you think this and Singapore are perhaps the last chances for you to get back into the championship?
Jenson Button: It’s obviously not over until there aren’t enough points left on the board to win the championship. I’m in a different position to the one I was in last season. I had a lead at this race last season, but now I’m the man chasing. The difference is that I think I now have a more competitive car than I had at the end of last season, so there’s a lot more possibilities. The good thing is that there are also a lot of people fighting for the championship, there are five of us, I would say, so it’s pretty mixed at the front. As you can see there’s been quite a lot of action this year because the cars have been pretty close on occasions. Yeah, it’s all still to play for. I don’t think you can just say it’s the next two races that will either put me in the championship hunt or out of it. Obviously if I didn’t finish the next two races it would be a big issue. I think I come into this race pretty relaxed and calm, under no pressure and excited about the challenge of fighting for victory round here and that has to be the aim.
Question: The FIA published a calendar for next year with twenty races on it. I just wanted your thoughts about twenty races on a calendar that starts in early March and ends in late November? How’s it going to be?
Jenson Button: I think it’s good for the sponsors, more air time, more broadcasting. Racing twenty races during the season, I’m sure we can cope with that. Also I think it’s fantastic having a Grand Prix in India for the sport and obviously great for the sponsors. Yeah, it’s exciting, it’s always exciting having new circuits. There aren’t really any circuits that I want to get rid of, so it’s nice to add to the calendar.
Question: Fifty percent or even more of the downforce of the cars comes from the flat bottom and the FIA will increase the test of the flexibility of the flat bottoms here. Do you think it will change the grid or the competition we’ve seen up to now?
Jenson Button: I’ll start with this one. I hope so. The floor is a big part and the diffuser is a big part of the downforce of the car and I think it’s good that it is, because I think that using the floor to create downforce is a positive thing and may be something that we should look at for the future, so I think we will be able to run closer together and possibly race closer through corners. But as long as we’re all on the same regulations, I think it doesn’t really matter where we are, if we have a lot of downforce through the floor or not, but only as long as we’re all running to the same regulations and we all understand the wording of the regulations. The important thing is that we’re all working from the same hymn sheet.
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