Jenson Button clings to narrowing lead
Jenson Button's Belgian Grand Prix lasted just five corners
Jenson Button has gone from runaway leader of the F1 championship to man on the run.
Having scored 61 points from a maximum of 65 over the first seven races, Button has only picked up four in the last three.
Remarkably, he still has a reasonably healthy lead in the championship. But with his team mate closing in it might not last much longer.
Here’s how Button’s closest rivals have cut his championship lead:
Jenson Button's championship lead (click to enlarge)
Button has been on the podium since he won the Turkish Grand Prix. At the time many were saying the season was over.
That all changed when Red Bull’s revised aerodynamic package at Silverstone – which coincided with a downturn in Brawn’s form – left Button suddenly looking vulnerable.
And even now the team believe they have cracked the problem, it’s Rubens Barrichello who’s making the most out of the car.
The mainstream press have begun writing ‘Button under pressure’ headlines. Button snapped at The Times’s Ed Gorman in Spa after being asked whether he really wanted to win the world championship.
However badly things are going for Button, his rivals must do better to stand a chance of beating him.
Even if the series leaders continue to pick up points at the same rate they have over the last three races – when Button had his three worst results of the year so far – he will still retain enough of a margin to be champion:
Button 78
Barrichello 76
Raikkonen 74
Vettel 63
Webber 61.5
Hamilton 57
The identity of the closest driver to Button has changed three times in the last four races. Although all three are closer to Button than they were five race ago, his lead has only been reduced by ten points.
Even with his recent problems, this championship is still Button’s to lose. Barrichello has done a much better job tapping the pace of the Brawn in the last two races. If he hadn’t got bogged down at the start at Spa (again) he would have done even more damage to Button’s lead.
Even at this late stage the 2009 F1 season is proving incredibly difficult to read. In just the last fwe races we’ve seen a resurgence of Mclaren and Ferrari, though McLaren, struggled at Spa and Force India came out of nowhere to get on the podium. The widely expected dominance of Red Bull last weekend failed to materialise.
It makes the final five races extremely hard to predict. Force India’s impressive low-drag trim should serve them well at Monza, where we can also expect the KERS cars to be strong. Point-and-squirt Singapore looks like McLaren territory. On paper, Suzuka should be good for Red Bull, but they’d probably prefer to tackle it with the hard compound – Bridgestone are bringing medium and soft.
Button still has a good lead and the scoring system means he only needs to keep picking up points in fours and fives to stand an excellent chance of winning the title. His rivals needs to start stringing wins together – but the fact that six different drivers have won the last six races shows how hard that will be.
Do you think Button is suffering under the pressure? Or is his drop in performance explained by setup problems and some bad luck? Have your say in the comments.
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Polak said on 1st September 2009, 7:22
Its not all bad luck for Button. There is a significant drop in performance and it shows when compared to Rubens. Its gonna be hard to tell if its pressure or technical problems. Maybe his entire crew is under a lot of pressure and not 100%
In either case I’m enjoying this change of pace. We have been spoiled by close championships recently and I would like this season to be the same. Nothing better than the WDC being decided in the last seconds of a race.
Max should resign now!!! said on 1st September 2009, 7:24
I hope Brawn lets his drivers fight freely for the championship, I would hate to see another “Barcelona” being pulled on Barrichello.
1994fanatic said on 1st September 2009, 21:47
Barcelona how about austria 2002, that was a swift kick in the jimmy for him I imagine.
skova265 said on 1st September 2009, 7:33
if the points would be going at this rate think tha Hamilton would have more than 57
Ruudje said on 1st September 2009, 7:58
18points in the last 3 races. means 30 over 5 races. currently he has 27.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 1st September 2009, 8:47
Someone get Ruudje a blackboard :-)
Bigbadderboom said on 1st September 2009, 7:35
Every week we hear the same feedback from Jenson, he is always struggling for grip.
Initially this seemed to be something that both Brawn drivers suffered with, but recently Rubens seems to have either set the car up differently or adjusted his driving style to suit, whichever way you look at it it doesn’t stand well for Jenson. Personally I think a lot of Jensons problems are in his head, he has experienced the car performing in absolute ideal circumstances with a massive performance advantage, and now the rest of the field have caught up and the Brawn is having minor set up issues, Jenson seems to be blaming the car when what he needs to do is just get on with it. He is making too many mistakes now, and although you predict that he may have enough points Keith with the field now so competitive behind him, I fear he is still on a downward spiral mentally and he needs somebody (Probably Shove) to shake him up and get him to take some responsibility.
I like Jenson, but this recent run of form suggests there are kinks in his armour that are not typical of a world champion, he just needs to get on with the fight, and understand that you have bad days sometimes and not to dwell on them. For Sure. :)
IDR said on 1st September 2009, 7:47
I think the problem (IMHO) is that the car must fit his driving style.
Jenson has difficulties in adapting his driving to the characteristics of the car. In the first races, the car matched perfectly the driving style of Jenson and he was unbeatable; from the moment Brawn started to evolve the car because the other teams were approaching, Jenson is in trouble. Rubens is taking more from Brawn’s car despite he’s not better driver than Jenson.
The good news for him is other teams (Ferrari, McLaren, Force India!…) are taking points out from Red Bulls, so it’s going to be difficult for them (Red Bull’s) to recover, mainly if we take in consideration mechanical problems they are having, and the 8 engines rule.
Rubens could give some headache to Jenson if he continues getting good points and Jenson still continue of being out of the points.
mp4-19b said on 1st September 2009, 8:05
If Button doesn’t manage to win the championship, he’ll go down in history as the joke of the decade. The way things are progressing it might just happen :) I really hope it doesn’t. I don’t want to rake up another conspiracy theory, i think we have enough of there theories, but i’m tempted to make this point :-
Brawn & Button are doing this on purpose imho. They just don’t want to cake-walk to the championship. They want to make it look close. Maybe this was discussed at the FOTA meetings? i dunno, but its a possibility. The way button has fallen off the Radar is astonishing. Four points from three races? This Button slump is since silverstone, coming in the backdrop of rubens blah blah accusations against Brawn. Maybe Mr Brawn wanted to show to the world that he treats his drivers equally, hence the slump from button. maybe Button was given a Monza trim car for valencia & might get a monaco spec car for monza. Otherwise there is no reason for him to suffer like this. I’m happy Mr Brawn has done this, its good for me,him & the sport. :) :) :)
Bigbadderboom said on 1st September 2009, 8:18
mp4, you love it don’t you! :)
I bet you loved the X-Files…..”Trust No-one” Sometimes though things are as they seem!
I love your quote “I don’t want to rake up another conspiracy theory” Followed by the worst conspiracy theory posted here yet! Sorry mate but even I don’t think Ross Brawn is playing F1. He needs to attract sponsors and needs to secure the long term future of the team, that is 100′s of millions of pounds he is trying to secure. For Brawn to walk the championship would attract all the sponsors he needs, to think he would “throw” a couple of races to makeit look a bit closer is even by X-Files standards a bit out there……:)
John H said on 1st September 2009, 13:17
Hmmmm. No he won’t.
TommyB said on 2nd September 2009, 0:53
Yes he will
TommyB said on 2nd September 2009, 0:53
Infact just ahead of Badoer
sumedh said on 1st September 2009, 8:37
I thought someone would have noticed this by now.
Since Turkey, the driver who has taken most points off Jenson Button is not Rubens (10), Vettel (13), Webber (13),
but Kimi Raikkonen (14), and that too inspite of finishing behind Button in 2 of the 5 races.
The inability of the 3 closest contenders to string together a consistent performance is at blame here.
Jenson’s season resembles that of Alonso in 2006. Alonso scored 84 points in 9 races and suffered a major slump. However, Alonso had an impeccable Schumacher on his heels who could perform consistently well.
For Jenson thankfully, there is no Schumacher breathing down his neck.
BTW, going by Keith’s prediction, Jenson should win with 78 points. Is this the least points per race (4.6) scored by the WDC?
2007 was 6.5 points per race for Kimi,
2008 was 5.4 points per race for Hamilton
Red Andy said on 1st September 2009, 8:50
Except that during Alonso’s “slump,” he was still finishing regularly on the podium, apart from a couple of races where he finished fifth. Jenson hasn’t been near the podium now for five races.
Guilherme Teixeira said on 1st September 2009, 13:44
But Alonso’s slump in performance is due to that ridiculous mass dumper ban, which had a major significance in the whole car performance.
You can only blame Button’s slump on himself. Ok, the BGP 001 had a hard time in Silverstone and Nurburgring, but he has underperformed when compared to Rubens.
damonsmedley said on 2nd September 2009, 1:20
Good point, Button leaves every one of his likely championship rivals an opportunity to punish him points wise and the only one who thrives in his absence of form is Raikkonen, who lets face it, has a slender chance at mounting a challenge to Jenson for the WDC. Stop panicking, nothing has really happened to seriously hurt him in his title bid, I can’t imagine the fuss when Red Bull string a few wins together with no or little points for Jenson Button. Anyway, would you rather see Jenson kill the opposition and win the championship by 70+ points or see a similar to last season, final lap thriller? I know I’d rather see the latter, but I still believe Glock handed it to Hamilton on purpose…
CovertGiblets said on 1st September 2009, 8:49
It’s been mentioned a number of times by Mr Brundle in particular that a world champion needs to have an inner strength, a core determination to make that leap from driver to champion. I’m not convinced Jenson has that. He’s appearing increasingly fragile as the season progresses. The most important thing though is I don’t think Jenson believes Jenson he can do it.
Hopefully I’ll be proved wrong and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an idiot…. but we’ll see
Giant21 said on 2nd September 2009, 3:33
“Some drivers may win the champonship, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a champion”.
- Ayrton Senna
Rob R. said on 1st September 2009, 9:52
Button is clearly cracking. His outburst in that interview last week shows that he is.
But even so, but I’m having a hard time believing that Vettel, Barrichello or Webber can amass sufficient points to overtake him with only 5 races to go. I think Button can get it in the bag, just by stumbling home to another couple of 6th or 7th places.
It’s such a shame that it’s taken so long for Red Bull and Barrichello to really emerge. They’ve come back just too late, and now they’re going to continue to take crucial points off of each other in these last races. Vettel and Webber are still 20 points behind Button, even after he crashed out on Sunday. I’d love to be proved wrong, but I can’t see it happening.
Paul Sainsbury said on 1st September 2009, 10:12
I really don’t think Jenson is championship material.
He seems a decent bloke, but the fact remains that in the past he has been comprenensively out-driven by many of his team-mates over the course of a full season. Even Ralf easily outscored him.
DanThorn said on 1st September 2009, 11:00
Outdriven my many of his team mates? Ok, so he was beaten by Ralf, but that was his debut season. He actually impressed massively. Fisi beat him in that dog of a Benetton in ’01, but since then he’s had the beating of all his team mates, except for last year when Rubens finally seemed to get on top of him, although I’d put that mainly down to motivation.
PJA said on 1st September 2009, 11:15
Also as I remember other people mentioning in previous articles although Barrichello outscored Button last year, if you looked at all their finishes in 2008 then Button had a better record than Barrichello.
Nitpicker said on 1st September 2009, 14:22
… and that podium at Silverstone?
SamS said on 1st September 2009, 16:50
I think that was more down to the weather, and a good call by Brawn than Rubi out driving Jenson
1994fanatic said on 1st September 2009, 22:06
barrichello made the call to go to full wets in that race, the dude knows his changing conditions
Aardvark said on 1st September 2009, 10:57
Six different winners in the last 6 races now (and a chance of a 7th if Fisi’s Ferrari dreams come true at Monza!) Great stuff, when was the last time that happened?
I don’t think anyone’ll be consistent enough to close in and beat Button. When has Rubens ever had 3 great races in a row? Jenson still has the speed to get a few points if he has a bad race.
1994fanatic said on 1st September 2009, 22:11
hungary, belguim, italy and china in 2004, maybe he’s due.
Charlie said on 2nd September 2009, 16:55
1985 apparently
Paul Sainsbury said on 1st September 2009, 11:23
@ DanThorn….
Yeah, it is true that it was in his debut season that Jense was out-driven by Ralf……but wait, I seem to remember that in 2007 one Lewis Hamilton did slightly better in his debut season than his twice world champion team-mate.
Ok, it might be a bit unfair to compare JB against Hamilton, but I just can’t help feeling that if he were to be champion it would all be a little underwhelming. Good luck to him though, I always appreciated his positive attitude dealing with crap cars over the last few years.
anirudh said on 1st September 2009, 11:41
slightly out of topic….. On the eve of Belgium GP, Karun Chandhok had dinner with VIjay Mallya… The next day he gave an interview, in that along with praising Force India this guy was like
What does it mean? Is Karun going to be a replacement for Fisichella??? Mann i would love to see Karun driving for Force India!!!!
anirudh said on 1st September 2009, 11:42
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Monumental-achievement-for-Force-India-Karun-Chandhok/articleshow/4955381.cms
anirudh said on 1st September 2009, 11:46
another imp link!- http://www.forceindiaf1.com/index/page_id/356/news_id/222
PJA said on 1st September 2009, 11:57
It is surprising that even though Button has underperformed in the last few races his lead has not been cut more. It is a bit like last season when the title contenders kept making mistakes.
In the early races I remember it was said that Button copied Barrichello’s setup after Button had problems in practice, I wonder if he is still doing this as Barrichello has outperformed Button recently whereas early in the season it was the other way round.
The Championship is still Buttons to lose but I think if he doesn’t get his act together what could save him is that none of his challengers are dominating at the moment.
sato113 said on 1st September 2009, 12:16
Keith, don’t you mean Button hasn’t been on the podium since the Turkish GP?