Button confident of breaking duck
Jenson Button is calling on his Honda team to help him produce a “flawless weekend” if he is going to end his six-year wait for a Formula One victory.
Not for the first time, the Englishman was left disappointed after failing to translate potential demonstrated in qualifying into race-winning speed.
But Button is sure that if all the pieces fall into place in Malaysia, the scene of his first F1 podium will also become the venue where he breaks his duck.
“We’ve just got to do a faultless weekend and then we’ll see what our results are,” he said. “The confidence I have with the car and also with the team puts me in a strong position.
“We’ve got a car that’s capable of winning and a team that’s capable of winning. I think we’ve got a winning car and if I can’t win in it that’s an issue, obviously.”
The 26-year-old, who finished fourth in Bahrain last weekend, warned that everything needs to go for him if he is to see off the mighty challenge posed by Renault, McLaren and Ferrari.
He said: “I think we are going to see the same cars that were competitive in Bahrain being competitive here. It’s going to be tough, there are a lot of quick cars out there.
“It was very disappointing [to finish fourth]. If you have any sort of issue these days with how competitive the field is you have no chance of getting on the podium, let alone winning a race.”
When questioned how it was possible for McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen to finish ahead of him despite starting 19 places behind him in Bahrain, Button was at pains to explain that strategy is everything in modern Formula One.
“If you look at the result, you’d say fourth place isn’t great looking at our performance in testing,” he rued.
“But if you take into account the start, where I went back to ninth from third and the lap times which were very comparable to the front cars, it was a reasonable race for us.
“Raikkonen was on a one-stop strategy. That worked for where he was on the grid, and you have to take that into account.
“Our strategy was based on us qualifying at the front and because we dropped back at the start we lost a lot of circuit positions.
“When I came out after my first stop I was in traffic whereas if I had been up at the front where I should have been, that wouldn’t have been the case. Our strategy would have worked very well.”
