20/07/2012
NEWS STORY
Mat Coch writes:
He'd never tell you, but Jenson Button is carrying the weight of the world upon his shoulders. Outwardly he remains confident, calm and collected yet behind his eyes is just a hint that he's fighting with his back to the wall.
There are a few more subtle signs however. He is more subdued, less prone to comic outbursts, for instance. It's not the language of a confident Jenson Button.
The season has not panned out well for the 2009 world champion. After winning in Albert Park in Australia the world was at his feet. Then came a calamitous Malaysian Grand Prix and a string of difficult weekends ever since. For his confidence not to have taken a battering would have meant the 32-year-old was not human.
At the heart of the problem lies the Pirelli rubber, which McLaren has struggled to come to terms with throughout 2012. It's seen the team slip down the running order to the point Button himself suggests the mighty Woking outfit is now a second string team.
"It's those two teams at the front," he says of Red Bull and Ferrari, "then you've got the Lotus behind and then you've got a gaggle of cars which is the Mercedes, the Sauber, ourselves, Williams and Force India almost."
It's more complicated than that, of course, but there is a grain of truth in his thinking. Button lies eighth in the championship, his teammate Lewis Hamilton with almost double Button's 50 points is fourth. Blow for blow McLaren has not been a match for Red Bull since Canada, and was unable to lay a finger on them in either Valencia or Silverstone. Ever the consummate professional he plays the team game to perfection, singing its praises in the face of adversity.
"We haven't got slower, it's just that other people have either found themselves or made good improvements," he continues, perhaps to himself. But the belief that was once so unshakable seems absent, he runs on auto-pilot when speaking with the media; distracted and absent. He is not the engaging speaker he can be.
A pre-planned meeting in the wake of the British Grand Prix - far from the crisis summit that was claimed - was a positive experience, Button says.
"There wasn't any shouting, it's not the way that we do it," though one could be forgiven if they had, least of all Button. "We're emotional and we want to win races and we want to be competitive but there's lots of different ways of going about your business and ours is to sit down and discuss it and go through it and learn from our mistakes and find the right direction."
For Button that direction must be one which takes him back to the front of a Grand Prix. Finding and unlocking that potential will be a combination of getting the tyres working while producing updates which increase the car's downforce. Downforce equates to tyre heat for Button, a point he's struggled with this season.
"That is one thing I think that we probably struggle with more than most," he concedes. "We've tried so many different things and we have tyre temperature now but you've got to be careful because you might be leaving other areas weak on the car trying to get tyre temperature. That's the weakness with us at the moment that some teams don't have, but you normally luck in to that. Last year we were the opposite; we could get the car working very easily but you don't know until you start testing.
"I feel a lot of confidence in the car, we're just not quick enough," he says, if somewhat unconvincingly. "We can get a reasonably good balance but we just don't have the overall pace."
An enthusiastic cyclist he speaks of the Tour de France with the sort of bubbling enthusiasm which is missing as he discusses his own season. He cracks a thin smile and expresses his awe for the athletes taking part, but even that is slightly subdued.
With Button one has the feeling that just a single result is all that is needed to lift the weight from his shoulders and see him challenging at the sharp end once more. With rain in practice and strong early pace the signs are good, but Jenson has been here before. Still, just one result is all one feels he needs.