With Lewis Hamilton's imminent departure from McLaren, is Jenson Button capable of fulfilling the ambition of one of the sports top teams? This season, he's been consistently inconsistent and with an apparent hamstrung Lewis Hamilton continuing to outperform his team-mate bar mechanical failures, you have to ask yourself if JB can fill the void. I am half expecting Sergio Perez to come in and outscore Button. Or is he just having a bad season?
McLaren have taken a huge gamble in beleiving that Button can lead the team on his own. Being thier usual anal selves, they have doubtless poured through reams of data which has suggested that he can hence why they were relatively relaxed about Hamilton's contract situation as they probably thought Hamilton would never leave for anything other than Ferrari or RBR. At least Whitmarsh doesn't have to feign praise anymore for Hamilton, he can spend all post-race interviews gushing over Jenson's miraculous drive to 4th place every time.
You could say letting Newey go was Williams biggest mistake and why they fell down the order quickly! 10 years down the line we could be saying the same thing with McLaren and Lewis...
I'll start by saying I'm a fan of McLaren.. but next years line up doesn't fill me with joy. We all know that JB needs to the car to be to his liking otherwise he's a bit meh, when the cars been to his liking, Melbourne and Spa, he's been untouchable, but he doesn't appear to be able to drive around issues with the cars performance like Hamilton can, there's times this year where Lewis has put the car higher up the grid when he had no right in doing so. Both JB and Perez aren't great qualifiers, the regs won't change much next year and the tyres will still need to be managed, with the trend of the last few races, you need to get in front early, keep your tyres out of the hot air of the cars in front so you can manage them better also don't buy Perez is great at saving his tyres, he lucked into the tyre strategy at Monza due to his poor qualifying performance and Canada was track/car specific, it was obvious that day that the Sauber and Renault were easier on their tyres allowing him and Grosjean to carve their way through the field at the end! I'd be very surprised if they win more than 3 GPs next year!
The way things seem now, I think Jenson and McLaren deserve each other. Why can Jenson only "find any grip" about three times a year? Who's fault is that anyway? But I hope Pérez can bring a spark and inject some new life into the team because they will really miss Lewis.
I think Lewis summed it up after qualifying this weekend: "Haven't got a clue what happend to Jenson." AKA: How the **** didn't he get 2nd? The car has been unbeatable! And I would agree considering how fast they were on the prime tyre.... Alonso and Seb would kill for that sort of advantage.
Poor, poor Vettel. Will he ever get a break where he can finally enjoy an advantage over drivers? Ah well, I suppose he must soldier on as best he can against all the odds.
As much as some here do seem to want them to crumble Button/Perez and McLaren will be fine. Lewis is not the be all and end all of the team He has not been draging them to victories, they won before him, they will win after him. In Jenson they have a world champion and in Perez probably the best young talent in the sport at the moment. They are weaker without lewis because he's a great driver, but its no crisis. Button has not had a great 2012, but he has shown enough in his past to make me believe he can recapture his form. He may have shown inconsistancy this year, but in 2011 he took 8 podiums in 9 races with the other being a 4th so he's not naturally inconsistant. A few things will work for him that didn't this year. Fistly having Perez as a teammate makes things easier, its hard to say how quick he'll be but judging by the way Whitmarsh constantly mentions him "learning" and "developing" that they are not expecting him to match JB instantly, this means when the car is good he wont face as a strong a challange interally (he started 2nd behind lewis 3 times this year, 4 poles sounds a lot better than 1). It also means the car is going to be designed for him and his style. Secondly Pirelli are going to give the the new compounds for next year a wider operating range, which should in theory be a big boost to Jenson because it lessens the biggest weakness in his driving style, sensitive pirellis are probably the biggest reason for his drop in form this year. McLaren wont just suddenly making good cars without Lewis either. The MP4-27 may not have proved very reliable but its a quick baseline to evole into the 2013 model with fairly stable regs so theirs no reason why they wont compete at the front. To win the title things will have to fall into place and both will have to raise their game, but its very possible.
Do you think the blown diffusers helped his driving style then? And what about the double diffusers of 2009? Its a well known fact that Jenson prefers understeer more than oversteer, so would the extra downforce at back make the car more balanced in terms of downforce, helping him to be faster. With no major innovations this year at the rear of the car (apart from Coanda exhausts, as they don't seem to have affected the cars as much as the EBD or DD), surely that could explain why Jenson has struggled with getting grip this year?
I always see people referencing this whole 'Jenson prefers understeer' thing. I've not seen or heard Jenson say it though. Is it in an article or interview or something? Perhaps someone could be so good as to provide a link to him saying it?
As a McLaren fan I am not looking forward to their 2013 season. Unreliability from the team and Button + Perez for the drivers - oh dear. I can only hope Button rediscovers what gave him such a good 2011 season and re apply it. And that Perez cuts the crashing out. I also hope that similar driving styles will help on the development side.
Tiny bit of digging and here, talking about the 2010 Merc being designed for him. I think its a factor yeah, and not one that going to improve, but the bulk of the problem in my opinion has been the tyres. Jenson goes into a little detail in this article http://en.espnf1.com/mclaren/motorsport/story/85321.html I'm cautiously optimistic that 2013 can be a better year.
I agree it's clearly obvious the McLaren, Ferrari and Lotus are better cars than the RB's as it took 2 Safety cars for Seb to catch up!
