The problem that I find with Jenson and Heikki, is that they just don't seem to be aggressive enough. Ok, Heikki was always going to play second fiddle to Hamilton in his own team, but Jenson has got the chance to be at least equal, he just doesn't seem to have the same ruthless streak that a Hamilton or an Alonso has, and although nobody can ever take away the fact that he has a championship title under his belt, this will always prevent him entering the realm of the greats.
I'm sure it's been said many times before, but Jenson also seems to struggle to optimise his set up at times, and when this is the case he struggles for motivation and pace. Difference now is that with a full load of fuel on board, the importance of having the optimum set up is more marginal during a race, whereas Jenson can also compensate by being easy on his tyres, hence his race pace looks good; if he could get the set up right on a light fuel load, he would be very difficult to beat from the front row on a Sunday.

Early 2008 he wasn't, but he was still given worse strategies. That could have demoralised him when he noticed he is even beating Lewis and then not given a fair chance with the strategies. Whitmarsh kept explaining it by saying they are preparing for a safety car period. But they were only preparing for it with Heikki! At first I believed that explanation but when it kept coming again and again I had to start rejecting it - preparing for a safety car in every race like that does not make sense, you'll lose more than gain with that strategy in the long term. A safety car period is an exception, not a rule.

I think Whitmarsh actually feels sorry for what happened to Heikki at McLaren and maybe he is now going to an extreme with Jenson to make sure the same doesn't happen with him.

He was given worse qualifying strategies but only because he could never produce on racedays

HK was good on low fuel runs because of the way he set up his car. LH destroyed him usually fuel corrected and was even stronger in the race.

Citing tyres or other mechanical elements as excuse is just plain BS. You have to adapt to what you're given.

Did that include Ron Dennis?

Race pace, I suppose, but quali is certainly not pointless... as any fans of JB will point out this year. Or even better, fans of FM. No point having a fast car if you cant use in during the race.

I know HK sucked during the races and was better in quali but I dont think that was because he had no talent for actual racing and was just a time-trialist. I think a lot had to do with being under pressure and not having as much confidence as some other drivers like LH esp on first laps. In that situation support from the team is vital and I think in a team that truely backs him he will do fine because he has the basic talent.

Think of it this way. If JB was not a WDC (imagine that SV got it together last year and won as SV should have given his car) and then JB got dumped out of Merc for MS and instead of joining Macca on a high, he came with his tail between his legs ... effectively to be a No 2. - given that scenario do you think he would have two wins this year from making ballsy high pressure calls on the track? Now think - Where would his season be without those wins since he's been pretty consistenly gapped on pace by LH (in quali - and probably in races too) - then you see that there is a fine line between success and failure in a top team and a lot of it has to do with confidence and backing from the team.

Another example - Massa at Ferrari. His success v team mates has been pretty much turned on and off like a tap by that team depending on whether they choose to back him or not.

JB's success this year needs to be put in context... its not just down to him - though that is not meant to suggest that he does not fully deserve his success as I freely agree that he is a fine driver and a credit to Macca as an organisation.

Thats a very simple thing to say and can be said about anyone on the grid or just in day to day life. Humans are the sum of their experiences.

No no no, we've got to keep the thread alive so we can gloat when Jenson wins the championship!

Re Massa, is there any evidence that Ferrari chose to back him over Raikkenon? in 2009 maybe. but Massa was pretty much up there with Raikkenon even in 2007. As for his performance against Alonso, he's got a knock on his head, sit out for half season due to injury. and maybe Alonso is better than Raikkenon.

Jenson's confidence is entirely his own, he's a WDC, he won it with another team. It got nothing to do with McLaren. As for Heikki, I agree he lacked confidence, but not because of lack of backing from the team. He just couldn't handle the pressure to deliver in a top team.

I think it's unfair on Jenson to make out that he's worse than Heikki, who in my opinion is a top 10 driver. Button is top 5. Heikki is undoubtedly a little quicker than Jense over a lap, but I would back Jenson to finish ahead on points - like he did against Trulli in his third season when Trulli generally whipped him in qualy - every time over an entire season by means of his better race pace, overtaking, race craft and reading of the race.

Even Jenson's one race day weak point - his defending ability - is not a weakness as against Heikki as the Finn is arguably even more of a soft touch. Ultimately the most disappointing thing about Heikki was his lack of that sisu which characterized the earlier "holy trinity" of Finnish F1 stars: Rosberg, Hakkinen and Raikkonen. He lacked fighting spirit and would seemingly just give up and allow himself to be overtaken by slower cars far too often. You can blame McLaren all you want for consistently fuelling him more heavily than Hamilton. But was it the team's fault that he almost invariably went backwards in the races?

My view is that there's far too much money in sport in general and certainly in F1 so that guys like Heikki - who was lucky enough to have signed his contract when the current global economic problems were just a looming threat on the horizon rather than an actual fact and consequently was on a retainer that was at least half as much again as Jenson is now on - enter a false comfort zone and start mailing in their performances. Rosberg Sr would have been happy with bread and water and his expenses covered and for that he would have left everything on the track after every race. Multimillionaire tax exile Heikki found it easy enough to give up once he realized he was never going to beat Lewis.

Button knows he won't either - at least on pure ability -, but he's most certainly NOT given up. Rather, he's hanging around, hanging in there, making up for his qualy shortcomings by driving really well on Sundays, hoping that something - bad luck, unreliability, penalties - will turn up and give him back in a couple of races what he's lost over the past five. And in F1, something generally does turn up. But on balance that "something" is slightly more likely to happen to the guy who's back in the pack - albeit whilst dicing with excellent drivers like Rosberg and Kubica who rarely make contact with others - than to his teammate who's fighting with the faster Red Bulls. Even when you factor in that both Webber and Vettel are more contact prone, it's safer to be higher up the grid. But let's see how it all pans out.....

Are people comparing Kovalainen and Button now? It's uncomparable, Button is just a tad little slower than Kovalainen in Q, but miles better in race. Button is closer to Hamilton than Kovalainen is to Button, IMHO

I am fan for LH but I must honestly admit that at the beginning of the season I underestimated Jenson Button.
Jenson Button has brought a maturity to the team, Lewis Hamilton benefits from it now. Both drives for MCM doing best Job and i think MCM must be proud for his drivers.
Martin Witmarch is the best manager in Formel 1 now because everyone can see that he does his best to give both drivers equal possibility to defeat each other.
Jenson Button
Lewis Hamilton
MCM
Martin Witmarch
sorry for my englich

The problem could be the problematic Mclaren of last year. We saw at Britian how Jenson can also not cope with a difficult car.

I think people got the wrong impression of Heikki. He's a very fast driver and in a good car he can be very good.

If he'd driven this year for Mclaren, he'd be alot closer to Lewis imo.

I think Heikki's race pace woes were more compounded last year with him driving a sht car...but I agree, Id take Button over Heikki. What Button might lack in actual qualy pace, he more than makes up for in race pace and racecraft, something which Heikki has hardly being impressive at.

The points are awarded at the end of the race, not qualy so yea Button >> Heikki

Heikki got a lot of support from McLaren IMO - I read lots of reports where they tried all sorts of things in the factory to improve his performances. I loved Heikki as a guy, but there was something lacking although he is a decent driver. He definitely lacked confidence in his starts, often falling back quite a few places in the first lap and never really made up ground in the race.

Kovy going up against Lewis at 23 in only his 2nd season was a big factor, he couldn't hope to have the reserves of confidence that JB had at 30 after 10 seasons. Simple maturity and experience makes such a difference.

But anyway Kovy wouldn't have pulled off the wins in Oz and China, even if he's possibly quicker on a lap, they show what a good signiong JB was.

Kovy did really keep his chin up over two very difficult seasons though, it was impressive. That's something Jense is going to have to show us now I think, the honeymoon is over. I suspect the EBD is going to open up a very noticeable gap between him and Hammy.

I was just gonna say.

It will be interesting, if it makes the car fast but twitchy you are going to be right. But if it makes it fast and solid like the RedBull there will be nothing between them I suspect.

The trouble for Jense is the EBD only works under power, on corner exit, when he wants the solid back end on corner entry. If anything the blown diffuser is going to be a bit less effective on a closed throttle, because it can't be totally optimised for its unblown mode any more. We saw the same thing with the blown rear wing, it's compromised a bit.

Also it's going to need some adaptation in driving style - more time on the throttle probably, more overlap with the brakes - and the balance of the car is going to be more variable. On paper it's going to want a really strong front end so that on corner exit the stuck-down rear end doesn't make it understeer like a pig; that means on corner entry it'll be a wild thing.

This must be why Lewis wanted to run it at Silvertstone and Jense didn't. Also in MW's quotes about it the question seems to be about JB using it while Lewis already knows he wants to.

Well we'll see. Not wishing disaster on JB at all, but the theory looks bad for him. My amateur theory anyway. There is probably something seriously wrong with my theory since the Red Bulls don't behave like that . Well they do seem to understeer on corner exits. It might depend on the degree of development and integration.

Have to see it to know I suppose, roll on FP1...

Interesting read Anyone heard if McLaren have done more simulator work with the data they got in Silverstone? It would be good to know that the drivers are getting a chance to simulate the change in the car's balance and downforce from the braking point to the corner exit. I'm not assuming that Button will struggle more with a big car change like this one, but it's highly likely given he had no confidence in it the last time around.

McLaren, and no simulator work?
I'm sure they worked with it

They made a "who can put up a tent faster" contest today
between Lewis and Jenson...
Guess who was faster and has more "pitch pace" ;)

http://twitpic.com/27kptb

No, no .... they put up the tent together...without any help.

Ok...
First Lewis tent, than Buttons

Wrong again... they are sharing the tent.

I hear Nicole and Jessica are not too happy about it ....

Oh dear
didn't know, that the team harmony is going this far

... well... y'know... 2 British drivers and all that...

Absolute smasher from Lewis!

Jenson just saw the sector times of Lewis

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lewis-Hamilt...100001213960500

So on a day when hamilton made a mistake that cost the team a lot of running Whitmarsh comes out, defends the error and congratulates lewis...



This does not compute with certain conspiracy theories...

No it does not. But what do you expect, those who were behind that to take their words back?

Come on robefc. Its pretty obvious he reads the Autosport forum and is aware people have cottoned on to his Jense love. This was mearly a poor attempted at covering his tracks.

Why not?
if I was wrong, than I was wrong
This time Whitmarsh was noble

but this does not mean , he did it without any ulterior motives

To put it in MW words: Lewis smashed the car, because he "was trying hard enough". Jenson didn`t smash the car, but on the other hand "he wasn`t trying hard enough"

"Lewis did not, he would have done, and Lewis did not run an option tyre either.

"And actually I have to congratulate Lewis. He was getting out there late. I was niggling the engineer to say, have a run and then come back and do an option at the end, and it was actually Lewis discipline that said in that limited time I just want to do one run on the prime tyre. He said I know when I put the options on it will be quicker, so I don't need to prove it.
"I spoke to Lewis just now and congratulated it on his discipline because I would probably have tickled him into doing a late run on the option tyre."


impressive
Lewis did not want to make a glory lap,
even if Whitmarsh wanted Andy to convince Lewis, he should do it.
(and impressive from MW to admit it)

Sometimes I have the impression , they sent Lewis out, to drive on the edge to have some fun
(Monza 2009, or MWs comments about "mental mastrurbation" for the team, when Lewis charges through the field overtaking right and left, and central)

So when does Lewis get time to do setup work I wonder, or does he just simply drive the car he's given?

edit: he's got only FP3 to do car setup, which could prevent him to fight with the Red Bulls perhaps in the race ( in qualifying he has no chance ofcouse ;P )

Doesn't think of the fans at all...doesn't he know how comforted we'd have been to see him top of the time sheets!

Seeing as Jensen was busy doing all the work that the pair of them were meant to do and he was running a different front wing when the track was at it's best I don't think he'll be that bothered.

Due to the added responsibility of being the single car for most of a session Jensen's times mean very little. It was more important to get the laps in rather than anything else.

He'll do it tomorrow.

Well I can get into that, that he was noble this time. But does that mean the conspiracy theory is still there?

But as I see, you already claim you were wrong about it. To then crawl back.

What's so impressive about that? Big deal.

Of course is the conspiration theory still there
MW is only nice to Lewis, to spur on Button

FFS! It's JENSON not JENSEN!

How many times do people get that wrong on here

Nothing much, but it's just another Lewis sterotype being squashed

Felt sorry for Lewis today. It was a very small off that caused his problems and Ant Davidson mentioned that it was only because he had been quick enough to catch the initial slide that it speared off into the barrier - if he'd let the car go, he may hast done a 360 and been able to carry on.

They both have to hope that Jenson did enough evaluation work to get some good settings for tomorrow.

I don't see why, though. A mistake is a mistake. Alonso got grilled for his "small" mistake in China. Why not Hamilton?

He pushed too much and paid the price. The same would have happened at Silverstone if the Becketts, Maggotts and Chapel complexes were filled with sands and tyres walls.

I think the point being that many other drivers made a similar mistake today without the same consequences.

Alonso's small mistake, are you talking about jumping the start?

I didn't see the sessions so I don't know about other guys' offs.

As for Alonso, I was referring to his mistake in Monaco's FP3.