Jenson Button said that his team-mate, Lewis Hamilton, has emerged ahead of Red Bull and Ferrari as the biggest challenger to his world champion crown. The pair have enjoyed a close working relationship this season but Hamilton is now the championship leader after winning the last two races and is going for what would be his first hat-trick here on Sunday.
Button, the early-season leader after victories in Australia and China, said: “I think Lewis has to be pretty much my biggest rival. The great thing is I know exactly what he is doing with his car as a team mate. We work well together and that is the most important thing for us. There are going to be times when we are wheel-to-wheel and we just have to make sure we respect each other in racing terms and don’t do anything silly.”
As rivalries have intensified in the other camps the obvious cordiality that exists between Button and Hamilton – at least until now – has been a feature of life at the high end of the paddock this season, although it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Button had beaten Hamilton in Turkey after confusion over team orders. The Guardian
Button, second in the overall standings and three points behind team mate Lewis Hamilton after two successive McLaren one-two finishes, said Red Bull were blindingly quick when everything worked out.
Australian Mark Webber showed that with back to back wins in Spain and Monaco while Germany’s Sebastian Vettel led a one-two in Malaysia. However the two Red Bulls also lost a one-two in Turkey when they collided.
“When they get it together they are awesomely quick,” said Button, winner of two races this year.
“But more often than not they seem to have got it wrong somehow, be it reliability or strategy mistakes or crashing into each other.” Yahoo! Eurosport
The Spaniard believes he could have won last time out in Canada even without the new system, which guides hot air from the exhausts in such a way as to enhance airflow over the diffuser and thus increase downforce.
“I think we are optimistic. We are happy with the job we have done in these last couple of weeks, so we arrive in Valencia with a good package in our car.
“But we remain very calm about our expectation as other teams were not watching television in these last two weeks, so I think everybody will bring updates here. Hopefully ours is a little bit better than others.”
“I think it will be interesting to see this race, how it goes. There have been some circuits better, some circuits with problems, some up and down for the team performance in the last couple of races, so hopefully we can continue the performance we saw in Montreal. The line that put us in a competitive level, fighting with McLaren and Red Bull.
“In Turkey we were not quick enough, so we want just to try to confirm the feeling of Canada and be competitive here again and hopefully finish on the podium.”
Interestingly, he was much more confident ahead of Spain’s World Cup meeting with Chile last night. “Easy, easy, easy,” he laughed. “We will win. That’s for sure.” Independent
Pos Driver Team Points 1 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 109 2 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 106 3 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 103 4 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 94 5 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 90 6 Nico Rosberg Mercedes GP 74 7 Robert Kubica Renault 73 8 Felipe Massa Ferrari 67 9 Michael Schumacher Mercedes GP 34 10 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 23 11 Vitantonio Liuzzi Force India-Mercedes 12 12 Rubens Barrichello Williams-Cosworth 7 13 Vitaly Petrov Renault 6 14 Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari 5 15 Jaime Alguersuari STR-Ferrari 3 16 Kamui Kobayashi BMW Sauber-Ferrari 1 17 Nico Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth 1 18 Pedro de la Rosa BMW Sauber-Ferrari 0 19 Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Cosworth 0 20 Karun Chandhok HRT-Cosworth 0 21 Lucas di Grassi Virgin-Cosworth 0 22 Jarno Trulli Lotus-Cosworth 0 23 Bruno Senna HRT-Cosworth 0
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