If Jenson Button doesn’t deserve the 2009 championship no-one else does
Will Jenson Button be number one at the end of the season?
I’ve followed the debate about whether Jenson Button deserves to win the championship this year with great interest.
His lacklustre scoring rate in the second half of the season – compared to his brilliant beginning – has caused some to ask whether he really deserves to be champion.
But what I’m yet to read is a truly convincing argument why either of his rivals, Rubens Barrichello and Sebastian Vettel, deserve it more. The simple reason is that they don’t.
Rubens Barrichello
They case against Barrichello is pretty clear: he’s got the same car as Button yet he’s scored 14 fewer points and won four fewer races with it. Dig a little deeper into the stats and we also find Button has led more than twice as many laps as his team mate – 280 versus 105.
Barrichello has had a good run of results recently but he’s thrown points away too with poor starts at Melbourne, Istanbul and Spa.
As with his team mate, reliability has generally been kind to Barrichello. The spring he lost in qualifying at the Hungaroring doomed him to 12th on the grid, and an over-stressed gearbox (which was still good enough for a win at Monza) cost him five places on the grid at Singapore.
On at least two occasions Barrichello has complained that strategy cost him points to Button. His infamous outburst at the Nurburgring came after a fuel rig problem left him behind his team mate – unfortunate, but nothing sinister. Spain was the odd one, where Barrichello’s team chose not to cover Button’s switch to a two-stop strategy, leaving Barrichello vulnerable on a three-stopper.
Since Istanbul, Button has neither won a race nor out-qualified Barrichello (except in Hungary). Though it would be silly to pretend this is anything other than poor form on the championship leaders’ part, the bald facts are Barrichello has not done enough to overhaul him and that is largely down to his form in the first half of the season.
Sebastian Vettel
Vettel arguably has a stronger claim to championship worthiness than Barrichello – he is only two points behind the Brazilian driver despite having several engine failures including two at the European Grand Prix weekend.
But Vettel, too, has made the kind of mistakes Button has avoided. He will be ruing his tangle with Robert Kubica at Melbourne, where he could have settled for six points and not had a grid penalty for the following race. He crashed at Monaco and gave the lead away to Button at the start in Istanbul (he was probably never going to win that one anyway – but his error left him behind Mark Webber, and there went another two points).
Also, Vettel has not yet shown he can fight his way to a win. Dominating a race from pole position is all well and good, but Button’s most impressive wins this year came when he made critical passes early on. While he made short work of Lewis Hamilton at Bahrain, Vettel remained stuck behind the McLaren.
One of the greats?
Appropriately, Button’s route to the title reminds you of the champion whose driving style he closely imitates: Alain Prost. The modern points system was just made for Prost, who was unfailingly consistent, always there at the end of the race, collecting precious points.
It isn’t an exciting way to win a championship but it is the logical, tactical way to do it – and Button is doing it very well. It’s exactly what many people in the last two seasons criticised Hamilton for not doing: staying out of trouble and making sure he’s there when the chequered flag comes out.
Button may well go on to win the championship with no more than the two sixth places he now needs to do it. That’s the way championships are decided these days and you can hardly blame him for sticking to it.
But some championship victories are more impressive than others and, whoever wins this year’s title, for me it won’t be as impressive as Fernando Alonso’s defeat of Michael Schumacher in 2006, or Ayrton Senna holding back Nigel Mansell in 1991.
But by all means tell me if you think I’m wrong. Does anyone deserve this championship more than Jenson Button does? Leave a comment below.
The championship battle
luky said on 16th October 2009, 11:45
Barrichello does! (deserve the title more than Button)
Unfortunately small mechanical problems arise…
luky said on 16th October 2009, 11:50
Also Vettel would (will?) be a great champion.
It´s his last chance of beating Hamilton becoming the youngest F1 champion. And loses also to Alonso being the youngest double Champion.
Mystic Pizza said on 16th October 2009, 14:17
As a JB fan, I have everything crossed that this is his year especially as there doesn’t appear to be heaps of support. Some of the criticism placed is justified when being compared to some other WDC’s but not all. Ultimately everyone has their heros and villians which is why there are sites like this to debate them!
I’m sure plenty of people will beg to differ but there have been several WDC’s that I feel only became champions because their equipment or team were either superior to the rest of the field or they were able to capitalise on other’s misfortune or mistakes. Doesn’t mean some others that have been crowned WDC I would rate as “deserving” of the title. In my mind that doesn’t discredit Jenson’s achievements this year. Whether or not people in general choose to remember him in the history of the sport is superfluous. His fans will.
However, as a bit of fun on the side this year, I have compiled a table of points achieved/points available taking into account when DNF’s have occurred and adjusting the points available accordingly per driver. Interestingly, having updated this with Japan’s result, Vettel’s percentage is 66% whilst Button’s is 63% making Sebastian at least on a par with Jenson’s performance over the year so far. Barrichello is next on 53% which perhaps means he is even less worthy despite being a thoroughly nice chap.
Derek said on 16th October 2009, 16:33
Button did not get all those results by accident, and is now tayloring his drives for the championship like they all do. Last year Lewis needed to finnish 5th (it did not suit him as he likes to go for it) and that’s what he did. Button will win the championship this year and he will deserve it, good luck to him and another British winner so soon.
Anthony Mwangi said on 22nd October 2009, 10:51
If Button is to be judged on the number of years he has spent in F1 i.e 9 Years, then he probably deserve to be the champion. however, if you to make a decision based on his performance this year, then could safely conclude that Jenson was simply gifted the championship.
perhaps the 2009 F1 racing will gone down in history books as the most boring and the most bizarre competition ever witnessed. At the beginning of the season the Brawn team was given a head start by FIA, under the most bizarre of circumstances. In the first half of the season, Jenson was not competing against any one but was simply cruising to the finishing line. That is not how real champions become champions.
The only true contemporary F1 champion todate is Lewis Hamilton. he fought for every podium he got on his way to championship last year. Its a shame that F1 racing standards have come down this far. We hope to see a real and true champion next year.
Daniel said on 22nd October 2009, 12:56
Well, in a way or another, every champion was “gifted the championship”:
2008 – Hamilton was helped by those two wins (twenty points) Massa lost because of his team’s erros (engine failure in Hungary and fuel rig in Singapore)
2007 – Raikkonen was helped by that stupid mistake Hamilton made in China
2005 – Alonso was helped by McLaren’s unreliabilty that compromised Raikkonen’s chances
2002 and 2004 – Schumacher had a car so much better than the rest of the field (just like Brawn this season, in the first half) that his only ‘rival’ was his team-mate, Barrichello, that was miles away from him, so that he won both championships with six or seven races to go…
On the otherside, every champion had his merit:
This year, the double diffuser wasn’t only in Brawn, but also in Toyota and Williams, but the new team was the only one with a car good enough to, with that revolutionary component, be almost invencible in the first races… Button’s ultra-smooth style was perfect to conduct that machine in its appex…
In 2008, McLaren made a better job than Ferrari, and that made the difference, since both title contenders made as many mistakes as the other…
In 2002 and 2004, Ferrari was only that superior because Schumacher came many years before (in 1996), brought brilliant people with him (Ross Brawn among them) and began a slow reconstruction process that rescued Ferrari from a situation, in 1995, that wasn’t much better than Williams’ current form….