Left field

Button to McLaren – the real deal or just pretend?

Jenson Button’s eye-catching visit to McLaren on Friday is of obvious benefit to both parties, whatever the reality behind the headlines.

If a deal is done, the new Formula One champion gets the bigger salary that Brawn are reluctant or unable to pay as well as a potentially winning car for next season.

McLaren would get a line-up of champions that will appeal to global sponsors like Vodafone and show that they remain, along with Ferrari, a big hitting team that can always pull in the top talent.

At the very least, Button is able to send a clear message to Brawn that he has other, viable and possibly more lucrative, options and that they cannot assume he will just stay out of loyalty.

McLaren are similarly able to remind Kimi Raikkonen, until now widely considered the main choice to partner Lewis Hamilton, that they too have alternatives and that he should consider reducing his wage demands.

Raikkonen, their former driver who won the 2007 title with Ferrari and has now left the Italian team, was seen at the factory on Wednesday with his management.

But what if Brawn don’t blink, Raikkonen refuses to accept McLaren’s terms and Button signs up to join Hamilton?

World champion Button makes boyhood dream come true

Jenson Button defied his critics and made a boyhood dream come true on Sunday as Britain’s 10th Formula One world champion.

Written off by some in recent years as an overpaid one-hit wonder with playboy tastes, the Briton capped an extraordinary season with a title that ranks as one of the sport’s most astonishing turnarounds.

The 29-year-old Brawn GP driver lined up in Australia in March with just one win under his belt from 153 starts but with a dominant car that he would go on to describe as “outrageous” and a “monster”.

He went on to win six of the first seven races and laid the foundations for a championship that would elevate him to the same level as the likes of compatriots Nigel Mansell and Lewis Hamilton.

Starting 14th in Brazil, with closest rival and Brawn team mate Rubens Barrichello on pole position, the title seemed destined to go down to the wire in Abu Dhabi. (more…)

Anyone still want medals to decide F1 title?

If Bernie Ecclestone had got his way before the start of the season, Jenson Button might have been crowned Formula One champion in Singapore on Sunday.

The commercial supremo’s plan for the championship to be decided by an Olympic-style medals system, with the title going to the driver taking most golds, would have left Brawn’s Button out of reach.

With six wins in the first seven races, the Briton’s tally cannot now be matched by anyone else.

Singapore winner Lewis Hamilton, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Button’s Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello all have two wins with three races left.

The only interest in Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix would have been the constructors’ championship and it is pretty much a given now anyway that Brawn will win it in their first full season.

Brazil and Abu Dhabi, making its debut with what promises to be the most lavish race yet, would have been irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

As it is, Button has edged 15 points clear of Barrichello and could win the title at Suzuka. But the battle could equally very well go down to the wire as well. There is still plenty at stake.

F1 appeal court rules in favour of Button’s Brawn

After all the fuss we now have a verdict — the controversial diffusers on the Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams cars are legal.

“Based on the arguments heard and evidence before it, the Court has concluded that the Stewards were correct to find that the cars in question comply with the applicable regulations,” the governing FIA said in a statement.

This will severely hamper Ferrari and McLaren. Brawn’s championship leader Jenson Button is now clear favourite for the title. What a turnaround.

It just goes to show what we’ve always known. Cars not drivers make the difference.

Brawn Supremacy provides F1′s feelgood moment

Brawn GP’s one-two win on their debut in the Australian Grand Prix may turn out to be the feelgood moment of the Formula One year (although maybe not for those locked in the great Melbourne diffuser debate).

Race winner Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello were the happiest drivers in the paddock by a very long way on Sunday night and even team owner Ross Brawn seemed momentarily overcome.

This was one of those moments that harked back to the ‘good old days’, when ‘garagiste’ owners could come to a race and beat the well-funded factory boys. The team with no sponsors taking on the corporate might of McLaren and Ferrari and win.

Well, maybe not…

Button’s car was the product of many, many tens — if not hundreds — of millions poured into their team by Honda over the course of a year before pulling out in December.

But that is not to deny the hard work and heartache — real, genuine pain felt by staff facing redundancy at a time of global recession – that went into producing that magical victory.

Diffuser confuser for F1 opener

This week’s Australian Grand Prix diffuser controversy was more of a confuser for the casual spectator, even if it was a classic of its kind.

Never mind the talk of air flow and aerodynamic interpretations. The bottom line is that it may be weeks before we know for certain who won Sunday’s Formula One season-opener.

If a Brawn, Toyota or Williams finishes first then everything will be left shrouded in uncertainty.

Despite a raft of rule changes and talk of a new determination to set aside differences and bring the sport closer to the fans, it has to be said that Formula One retains an infinite capacity to shoot itself in the foot.

The next two races will be overshadowed by a controversy mired in technical minutiae and arguments of baffling complexity, with the verdict to be decided by a court of appeal.

Jenson Button could win Sunday’s race in a fairytale turnaround (even if his Brawn GP car is the product of millions of dollars of Honda investment) for a driver who seemed to have squandered his talent and be heading for the scrapheap only a month or two ago.

The fans will be buzzing, there will be a real sense of novelty… and then it could all go sour again.

More chaos in Formula One

The Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams Formula One teams have been cleared by stewards to race in Sunday’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix after protests by three rival teams over the design of their rear diffusers were rejected.

Red Bull, Renault and Ferrari had lodged protests on grounds the rivals’ cars did not comply with technical regulations. The three will appeal the protest’s rejection.

The new Brawn GP team, who have been comfortably quickest in pre-season testing, and the other two teams have been using innovative but contentious rear diffusers – a key part that governs the quick and smooth flow of air under the car to increase downforce.

Rivals argue the cars are illegal in a dispute that has been simmering for weeks. All this follows the controversy over this season’s points system.

“Sadly a lot of the column inches this weekend are going to be about controversy and it can easily become acrimonious,” McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh told reporters before the protests were lodged.

“That’s the way of Formula One, to sometimes stumble across into a very acrimonious environment. In defence of everyone, I don’t think anyone has set out deliberately to cheat here.”

Formula One threatens to turn upside down

Visitors to the London Science Museum can see Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren hanging upside down from the ceiling as part of an exhibition highlighting the use of Formula One technology in the wider world.

If that all seems topsy-turvy, it’s nothing compared to what’s been going on at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya this week.   The last big pre-season test involving all the teams before the first race in Australia on March 29 has turned the world on its head for Britain’s two drivers and forced a hasty re-assessment of their prospects.   Jenson Button, who last year trundled around in an under-powered Honda that should have been put out of its misery long before it got anywhere near a track, was as bright-eyed as I’ve seen him since he won in Budapest three years ago after his new Brawn turned out to be quite an eye-opener.   The Briton completed an impressive 130 laps on Wednesday, lapping comfortably a second faster than anyone else. On Thursday, his Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello went even quicker.   Not bad for two supposed has-beens whose F1 careers looked as good as over only a few months ago.   World champion Hamilton, whose car was the envy of most of his peers in 2008, hit the tyre barriers on Wednesday and ended up last. He was just as slow on Thursday. So not many smiles there.   Button scored three points last season to Hamilton’s 98 and had been dismissed by all and sundry. So much so, that Graham Sharpe of bookmakers Williams Hill had another pot shot at him last week when Brawn finally emerged from the remains of now-departed Honda.

“Poor old Jenson – well, rich old Jenson, really – has had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during his as yet unfulfilled career, and now he seems to have done it again,” he declared on his company’s website.   “Both he and his team will do really well to win a race this season and he seems doomed to watch Lewis Hamilton going from success to success while his career stagnates.”

Er, maybe not.  (more…)