Now don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely delighted that Jenson Button won the Formula One world championship yesterday in Brazil, but I do wish he’d stop walking around like Austin Powers saying: “I’m world champion, baby!”
Jenson Button. Today.
Baby?
Oh, and trying to sing “we are the champions” over the radio on his slowing down lap was a bit cringing as well. I don’t remember Lewis Hamilton reacting this way a year ago.
But apart from his almost schoolboy-style reaction to taking the coveted F1 crown, Jenson really did a good job yesterday. He drove like a champion and pulled off more stunning overtaking manoeuvres than some drivers manage in a whole season.
Jenson Button is World Champion. Odd to say that a year ago.
Yes, it was a victory richly-deserved for him and everyone at the Brawn team. It also marked an unusual double – not only is it the first time in a long time that we have had two consecutive British world champions, it is also the second consecutive year that car number 22 has carried its driver to the title. Next year it will probably be one of the Scuderia Torro Rosso cars with that number, but I wouldn’t rush out and put money on them achieving a bizarre sort of hat-trick if I were you…
But back to Jenson and that amazing Brazilian Grand Prix. This was a race that had everything you could wish for. The local hero on pole, his world title rivals and other usual front-runners far back on the grid and chaos on the first lap. We had a safety car, a minor fire in the pits, lots of on-track incidents, yet through it all Button drove a magnificent race. He was ninth at the end of the first lap and then battled with the Toyota of newcomer Kamui Kobayashi, who was a bit vigorous in his defence, before sweeping past.
Kobayashi really left Button Muri'ed for a bit...
By this time his nearest title rival Rubens Barrichello had fallen from first to third at the first pitstops. For here on Button just kept at it, despite losing places to Sebastian Vettel and a flying Lewis Hamilton at the subsequent pit stops, he came home fifth. This was more than enough to take the crown since poor Barrichello had his final hopes dashed when contact with Hamilton’s McLaren resulted in a puncture, dropping him to eighth.
Vettel’s fourth place wasn’t enough either and so it was a euphoric Jenson Button who came home in fifth, and embarrassed us all with his whooping and singing.
Overshadowed in all of this was a fine win by Red Bull’s Mark Webber, ahead of BMW-Sauber’s Robert Kubica and Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren.
Kubica was amazing - but no one cared
But all eyes were on the man from Frome in Somerset who made his Formula One debut with Williams in 2000, seemed to lose direction at Benetton and who, despite taking his first win in 2006 with Honda, looked to be out of a drive when the team pulled out of F1 at the end of last year. The phoenix-like rise of the new Brawn team has been a fairytale and both Button and Barrichello have made the most of what was the best car on the grid for the first half of the year. And even when their rivals caught up, they kept plugging away and eventually secured both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles.
Matching beards. Matching World Titles.
So well done Jenson and everyone at Brawn GP. Just please stop telling everyone you’re the world champion. We know, and we applaud you. And stop saying “baby”.
