Australia: Q&A with Jenson Button

What are your feelings going into the new season?

I have not slept that much this week, I must say. It is great to be here to start with for me. It is great to be here in Melbourne for the first race. That was the first goal. It is nice to be here and secondly we are in a much better position than most people thought, so it is nice to be here starting the season on a positive note.

Is it a massive excitement. Your father says he is having to take tranquilizers.

I think a bottle of red normally does it. My father does talk a lot. He is very excited at the moment. I don’t know, it is difficult. For everyone else they have been testing for quite a bit of the winter, but for us it has been condensed down to the last two weeks. We have been flat out with testing and simulator work, so it has all been quite busy the last couple of weeks. As I said it is good to be here and it is good to see the team with a very positive attitude. We have gone through a very hard time this winter but they have stayed strong and we’ve proved it with the reliability in testing and getting the car out.

There have been changes in the regulations with KERS and other things like slick tyres. What are the things that have affected you most as drivers, personally?

For me it has been the tyres. I really like the way the tyres work compared to the grooves, especially the front of the car, as obviously the surface area is more affected at the front than the rear going from grooves to slicks. I am enjoying driving the tyres. As soon as I drove them last year I found a benefit that suits my style a bit more, so I am happy with that change. Aerodynamically it is obviously different but we have gained so much grip having slick tyres in a way it balances itself out.

Jenson, you have been through a roller-coaster of emotions but you always seemed to believe you had a drive. Tell us about the atmosphere within the team.

First of all there was not really an option not to believe. When I found out last November it was obviously a big shock. You can get as down as you like but it doesn’t change anything, so I was keeping in contact with the team all the way through the winter. Some days were good, some days weren’t. But finally we have had a good outcome.

And the atmosphere within the team?

It is as good as you can imagine. But when I went there in November, the day after I found out that we might not be racing this year, the atmosphere was already good. I walked into the factory feeling a little bit down, but chatting to all the different departments expecting a few upset people and no positivity, but there was. They were all going about their business like they had been before the announcement and they knew they were building something that was good. They have done a great job and that pleases me no end. It is great to be a part of that as they have put their heart and soul into producing a car for this year.

Are you not worried that everything that’s been put into this car isn’t about to be wrecked by a protest which we understand is going to be filed this evening or later on today and that that could just trash the whole thing?

Well, first of all, it’s not something that I have any control over personally, and secondly, I think the best person to speak to about that is Ross.

But for you personally, it would be a huge disappointment, wouldn’t it, if the car turns out to be illegal?

You’ve said it yourself. It doesn’t change anything for me. I can’t do anything about it. It’s down to Ross and whoever else is involved.

Speaking of the new rules, do you think we’ll see more overtaking this year?

On the two circuits that we’ve tested on, there’s never been any overtaking anyway really. Barcelona and Jerez are very difficult for overtaking. I probably followed two cars in testing at Barcelona. I didn’t try and overtake… you’re on different strategies and what-have-you so… you’re not going to take the risk in practice either. I felt that I could follow a little bit closer but it wasn’t enough to make a move around Barcelona. Hopefully it’s going to be different at somewhere like this and when we go onto the next few races where there are opportunities to overtake. Hopefully there will be more of them. One of the bigger problems is if you don’t have KERS and you are behind a car that does have KERS, you’re not going to be able to get past, that’s one weakness of not having KERS.

Do you have a view on racing in twilight here in Melbourne?

There’s still going to be light left, isn’t there? I’m hoping. We have got a bright car. For us it doesn’t really make any difference. Dinner reservations are going to be difficult but apart from that, there’s no real difference. For us we can get up later on Sunday morning which is nice. I don’t know what difference it makes for you guys but for us it doesn’t change anything. As long as there’s still some temperature, that’s it.

The big buzz is for Brawn all the way down the pits. Have you felt that pressure, that all of a sudden you could be race favourite?

It’s not a pressure, definitely not, it’s a nice feeling. We’ve done seven days of testing, I’ve driven the car for three days which normally wouldn’t be enough. We’ve been reliable-ish, so we’ve been able to get quite a bit done in that time. I feel comfortable in the car, I feel that I’ve made it quite personal to myself which is good, but we’re coming here with an open mind, for sure. Testing is one thing and for sure we’ve been reasonably reliable and we’ve done some good lap times, but in 2006 we had a quick car in testing and we got to the first race and we got blown away by the Ferraris, so you never know until you turn a wheel here. I have a feeling we’re not going to be slow but how quick, we have to wait and see for that one.

You say ‘talk to Ross’, presumably you have spoken to him. Can you just give us an insight into what he has told you about the car? You must believe from speaking with him that the car you will be driving this weekend is legal?

For sure. Yup. I’ve said all I have to say on the subject.

It’s quite hard to categorise exactly where you are, because it’s an independent team with a customer engine and yet it’s got top team facilities. It’s a team that nearly didn’t make it and yet when it puts the car on the track it’s mind-blowingly fast. We all want to think of you as an underdog and yet in some ways you’re a favourite. Do you feel that kind of mixed feeling yourself and does the team feel that way?

I understand what you’re saying, for sure. We should be the underdogs, for sure, being a private team with a customer engine, but looking at the testing times, we’re not, but the testing that we had – seven days – it was so valuable to us. We’re not going to plod around slowly. We have to see what the car can do and we have to get the maximum out of it, push the car to the limit, so we can find the limit. So we don’t really have a choice in the matter. I don’t know if we are the favourites or what but it’s nice knowing that we have a competitive car and as I said, we don’t know how competitive it is but for me, all I know is that it’s great to drive and I feel that I can really work with it and the changes that I make, make a difference, good or bad, so I’m happy with what we have.

Over this difficult winter did you know that the new car was going to be so super-quick, and do you think that this perceived level of performance is going to be sustainable from such a small team over the season and beyond this season?

I knew it was going in the right direction, for sure. I spent a lot of time with the team at the end of the year, and obviously we started focusing on our car reasonably early, as you could see from our performances towards the end of last season. That’s one of the reasons why I was hanging on in there, hoping that the car would be raced in 2009, because for me it was strong and I think some of this is the reason why everyone’s kept their head strong and kept focused on the job in hand because they knew that they were going in the right direction and they knew that they had a good car or the makings of a good car.

Do you think you can sustain it throughout the season?

It’s all guesswork, for sure, and we really don’t know what’s going to happen even in qualifying and the race on Sunday. That’s something that I hope happens, that we can sustain our performance, whatever it’s going to be. Yeah, that’s got to be the aim. We’re here this weekend, hoping that we can do the whole season. We haven’t come to Melbourne to just do the first two or three races, we’re here for the championship, so we’ve got to hope that we can complete it.

Can I ask how many kilometres you tested during the winter and how much testing the team did in kilometres or miles or days?

Mine’s actually quite easy. I think I did about seven [days], I did about 1800 kilometres.