Jenson Button on the hot seat
Formula One champ, Jenson Button knows a few things about what good driving is all about. That’s why he’s giving kudos to the undercover police officer who drove his car on Saturday night, getting him and his companions out of a “scary situation.”
After qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix, Button left the track around 7 pm local time with his entourage which included his father and manager. The party was half a mile from the track when their car stopped at a traffic light. Button, who was riding
in the front seat, saw five young men walking out of a building at the edge of the road. Noting they “looked suspicious”, Button watched in shock as they started running toward the car.
Possessing that famed F1 hutzpah, the driver, who was an undercover police officer trained in vehicular evasion techniques, decided to speed through the light, ploughing through several vehicles. As the car sped away to safety, Button could see
“two guys with hand-guns and one guy with what looked like a machine gun.” Noting that no one got hurt, Button expressed relief at his good fortune, "The driver was a legend, a great guy, he got us out of trouble," the racer said.
Unfortunately, Button was not the only one in the F1 who had a ‘scary’ run-in with Brazil’s undesirable elements. In another unrelated attack on Saturday, three Sauber engineers were robbed just outside the Interlagos track. Taken together, some critics
are questioning the competence of Brazil’s security protocols, especially as they prepare to host the World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
However, Brazilian authorities were quick to dismiss the criticisms, insisting these incidents, while unfortunate, do not represent a larger issue of lax security. Indeed, attacks on drivers who stop at traffic lights or slow their cars in areas with intense
traffic are not uncommon in Brazil. Accordingly, the Sao Paulo police said they are beefing up security in the areas surrounding the Interlagos track.
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