“McLaren vows to fight until the very end,” says Jenson Button
Jenson Button vows to fight until the very last race in Abu Dhabi and hopes to score some good results in the final five races of the season.
Jenson was able to secure second place at the Italian Grand Prix this past weekend and closed the gap between him and the leader Mark Webber. The British driver is just 22 points short of Mark Webber with 5 races remaining. This means that there are still
125 points still up for the grabs. He believes that racing in Formula 1 is quite unpredictable, and you never know what is going to happen next.
The McLaren driver said that it seems quite funny now that people thought that this would be a two-horse race between Lewis and Mark after the Belgian Grand Prix. It is turning out to be an epic season, and after looking at the drivers’ standings, it is
hard to believe that it can get so close. Jenson believes that the championship will go until the very last race easily, and none of the top five drivers is willing to quit anytime soon.
The British thinks that the team will have to evaluate each race one by one based on its characteristics. However, he vows to drive conservatively as he did in 2009, and stated people would have to take every race as it comes.
“I think that driving just to score a certain number of points isn't in a racing driver's psyche. I felt that a little bit last year, I knew I only had to keep scoring consistently to take the title, but that was probably more mentally-taxing than just putting
your head down and going for it,” he said.
He linked last year’s Brazilian Grand Prix when he scored some decent points even though he qualified in 14th place on the grid. Similarly, the drivers would have to think of securing as many “safe points” as they can, and at the same time, push
as much as they can as well.
Consistency will be the key to the success according to the British, and it will be very important to finish each race in points to stay alive in the hunt for the title. The championship competitors will have to stay calm and not make any hasty or violent
decisions in the final five races. He believes that pressure will always be there if you are in the Formula 1, and it has already played a critical role in this season. The person who will crack the least will win the championship, he said.
Jenson stated that he could have won the Italian Grand Prix, if his team called him in a lap earlier than the race winner Fernando Alonso, as he lost some vital time warming-up his new set of hard tyres, while his rival’s car was in it’s ideal state.
"I had mixed emotions on Sunday. Obviously, I wanted to win the race and, having led most of it that was probably an achievable ambition; but I also managed to score some very useful points over the people ahead of me in the championship. And that gave me
a great feeling,” Button admitted.
However, Jenson was surprised to see the damage to the floor after the race, as he did not realise that his collision with Fernando had caused so much damage since the car was working perfectly.
"So, did we get the strategy wrong? People have said it was a case of who blinked first, but really, the fact was that we didn't have the fastest car in the race, and, while it would have been possible to have kept the lead, Fernando's pace meant that, at
best, that was still quite a long-shot,” he added.
The world champion believes that the team did all it could, and they played their best cards. A number of factors made it difficult for the team to ensure the victory. However, Jenson is back in the game again, and hopes to get even closer to the title.
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