Button Hopes to Match Red Bulls at LinesMaker.com

Button Hopes to Match Red Bulls

By Andrew Ben­son
BBC Sport at the Cir­cuit de Catalunya

But­ton is fourth in the cham­pi­onship, 37 points behind Sebas­t­ian Vettel

Jen­son But­ton is hope­ful he and McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamil­ton will be able to com­pete with Red Bull in Sunday’s Span­ish Grand Prix.

Red Bull dri­ver Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel is dom­i­nat­ing the cham­pi­onship hav­ing taken three wins and a sec­ond place from the season’s first four races.

But­ton said: “We’ve got a lot of updates here and there’s a rea­son­able amount of lap time there.

“Whether we can fight with the Red Bulls? We can hope. That’s the aim.”

McLaren, like most of the lead­ing teams, have a major upgrade pack­age to fit to their car at Barcelona’s Cir­cuit De Catalunya.

They have brought again new parts that they had to aban­don at the pre­ced­ing race in Turkey fol­low­ing reli­a­bil­ity con­cerns, and have more new parts on top of that.

They hope that will close the gap to the season’s dom­i­nant car at a track that is expected to be per­fectly suited to it — Red Bull’s Mark Web­ber dom­i­nated this race in 2010 hav­ing qual­i­fied on pole by nearly a second.

But­ton said: “The stuff we were going to put on the car in Turkey, makes the car look a lit­tle bit more sexy — and faster, obvi­ously. And also the updates we were always going to bring to Barcelona.

“It’s not as straight­for­ward as the quick­est car in qualifying.

“It’s a very long drag down to Turn One here, and even if they qual­ify half a sec­ond in front of us, we can still out­drag them into the first cor­ner, and then the race is anyone’s.

“So I think they’ve done a great job so far this year and so has Sebas­t­ian. But even if they do a great job in qual­i­fy­ing, I still think we can race them.”

Hamil­ton added: “If they stay where they are pace-wise, race-wise they’re 0.1–0.2 quicker than us.

“If they have that gap still, then we may be clos­ing on it a lit­tle bit this week­end, but you have to assume they are brin­ing updates that will pro­pel them for­wards. We have to assume the gap will be the same. We will find out in the next few days.”

Hamil­ton admit­ted that the cir­cum­stances of the indi­vid­ual races had meant Vet­tel had not yet had to extend his car to its limits.

“They’ve not been in the posi­tion so far where they’ve had to have the full whack (on the engine set­tings) and really test the lim­its of the car,” he said. “We’re try­ing to make that hap­pen, but it’s not that easy.”

Hamil­ton is the only dri­ver other than Vet­tel to win a race this sea­son and although he is sec­ond in the cham­pi­onship he is 24 points behind Vettel.

But­ton is fourth, behind Web­ber, 37 points adrift of Vettel.

But But­ton denied that the cham­pi­onship was already a lost cause, point­ing to his own start to his title win­ning sea­son in 2009, when he won six of the first seven races for the Brawn (now Mer­cedes) team.

“He is a long way ahead. I had a mas­sive gap in 2009 and Sebas­t­ian and Mark almost beat me in the cham­pi­onship,” Button said.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion, they have resources and they are will­ing to use them.

“They are obvi­ously very dif­fi­cult to beat at the moment and that’s going to be the case for the next few races, but we’re not giv­ing up. It’s some­thing you def­i­nitely fight for until the last race.”

Fer­nando Alonso, who has extended his con­tract with Fer­rari until the end of 2016, is fifth in the championship.

The Spaniard is hope­ful he can close the gap on run­away lead­ers Red Bull and com­pete for the world title.

He took a com­pet­i­tive third behind the Red Bulls last time out in Turkey and expects to be closer again at his home race this weekend.

“We had new parts in Turkey and made a step for­ward, and we have the sec­ond stage of those parts here,” he said.

“We are opti­mistic and con­fi­dent and we intend to be fight­ing with them soon.”

Alonso engaged in a race-long bat­tle for sec­ond place in Turkey with Red Bull’s Mark Web­ber, behind the Australian’s team-mate Sebas­t­ian Vettel.

At one stage, Alonso passed Web­ber for sec­ond place, only to lose the place again towards the end of the race because his tyres were older — and there­fore had less grip than Webber’s.

The Span­ish race was one of two events where Red Bull had their biggest advan­tage over their rivals in 2010, the other being Hungary.

Web­ber qual­i­fied on pole by nearly a sec­ond at the Cir­cuit de Catalunya last year, and took a dom­i­nant vic­tory in the race.

But although Red Bull’s advan­tage has been big­ger at every race this year than it was last sea­son, with Vet­tel tak­ing three wins and a sec­ond place from four races so far, Alonso said he did not expect Vet­tel and Web­ber to be so far ahead this weekend.

“Any­thing can hap­pen in For­mula 1,” he said. “For sure, Red Bull have been very dom­i­nant in the first part of the cham­pi­onship. It was dif­fi­cult to beat them in the race, and nearly impos­si­ble to beat them in qualifying.

“But we want to change this, start­ing here in Barcelona.

“It’s true the gap was one sec­ond last year — and this year it was even more than that at some tracks.

“But we are work­ing hard and think the gap will close. I would be dis­ap­pointed if it is a sec­ond again. We try to make some time again this weekend.”

Web­ber said: “Two tracks stood out for us last year — here and Hun­gary. But that was as much a sur­prise for us as it was for the other guys.

“Of course we hope to have a nice advan­tage again com­ing to this venue, but it’s not a given.

“The car should per­form well around here. The gap in qual­i­fy­ing was quite big, and the gap to Lewis [Hamil­ton] was under con­trol, but it was a bit dif­fer­ent to qualifying.

“That’s what we’ve seen for the last two years with the Red Bull. We have been strong in qual­i­fy­ing, and still strong (but not as strong) in races. I hope we still have a good gap.”

Vettel’s fly­ing start to the sea­son has left him with a 34-point lead over McLaren’s Hamil­ton — the only other dri­ver to win a race this sea­son — in sec­ond place. Alonso is fifth, 52 points — more than two wins — adrift.

But Alonso said that did not mean Vet­tel would nec­es­sar­ily win the championship.

“In the cham­pi­onship, if you look at the num­bers, you see Vet­tel quite far in front and then a group of six or eight cars not too far behind. It is only Sebas­t­ian who went a lit­tle bit too far at the moment and this is also thanks to his fan­tas­tic dri­ving in the first four races.

“It’s up to us to recover this gap. It’s up to us to have a more com­pet­i­tive car than Red Bull and win races.

“If we do that, the cham­pi­onship is long (enough) to recover the gap and still plenty of races. But to do any reac­tion and recov­ery in terms of points, you need to have the best car.

“It has hap­pened many years. It hap­pened in 2006 to me. I remem­ber after Canada I had 35 points to Michael (Schu­macher), which is 75 or 80 points of today [because the points sys­tem has changed], and Michael had two points more than me with two races to go.

“Any gap you can catch up, but you need to have the best car in one part of the cham­pi­onship, so we are work­ing on that.”

Vet­tel, who is chas­ing his first win in Spain, was in typ­i­cally cool mood when it came to his expec­ta­tions this week­end and in the title race.

“It’s a long way to go,” the 23-year-old said. “Many things can happen.

“I’m not feel­ing com­fort­able or wor­ried at the moment. I’m just tak­ing it race by race.”

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• But­ton Hopes to Match Red Bulls

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