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Vettel crash completely unnecessary, says Button
Jenson Button remains aggravated over the coming-together which resulted in him being removed from the Belgian Grand Prix last weekend. Having been knocked out of the race by a wayward Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull, the World Champion now lies 35 points in arrears of team-mate and new title race leader Lewis Hamilton.
Whilst battling for second place into the Bus Stop Chicane, Button’s left sidepod was punctured by Vettel as the German’s car speared into the McLaren after first heading towards the Armco barriers. Having now played the incident footage back, Button admits that he is yet to fully recover from the disappointment.
“My thoughts haven’t really changed, to be honest,” he said on his personal website.
“At the time I was pretty confused by what Sebastian did. Now, I still think what he did was completely unnecessary; he didn’t need to pass me at that point and I wasn’t making his life difficult, so his car shouldn’t have been on such a knife edge when he hit me.
“What’s most frustrating is that I’ve lost out on a good handful of championship points at a time when neither Sebastian nor Fernando (Alonso) were able to score. I know there are 150 points still up for grabs, but it doesn’t help to now be 35 points behind Lewis.”
Furthermore, Jenson believes that suggestions from Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner - that he braked earlier than usual - are uncalled for.
“No, absolutely not,” Button replied when asked if he did brake early. “Obviously I’d lost the floor-plate of one of my front wing endplates, and that was affecting the car’s balance, but I didn’t brake any earlier for the Bus Stop on the lap of the crash.
“After the race, I actually checked the data with my race engineer and it shows that I braked at exactly the same point as on the lap before the collision. We even looked at the braking profile and that also showed that, at the point of impact - about 1.5 seconds after I’d started applying the brakes – I’d travelled exactly the same distance on both laps, so to suggest I’d braked earlier wouldn’t be accurate.”
Read in full:
Post-Belgium interview with Jenson Button
Also on Friday:
Senna , di Grassi and Button to enter Monaco triathlon
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