I agree Button didn't handle the pressure well, but that's not the point. My point is that despite this, he won more races than anyone else and got more points than anyone else, equalled the next best in terms of races finished, and didn't make any race ending errors. And yet plenty of people are excusing Vettel for Australia (among others) and Hamilton for Monza (among others) in order to give them a 'driver of the season' vote. That's not to say either of those drivers did a particularly bad job but if one is prepared to forgive those errors why would one not consider Buttons poor qualifying pace forgiveable and vote accordingly in view of the overall season results?
It's not like the vote is absolute. It's 'who did the best job in 2009' not 'who is the bestest driver in the whole wide world ever ever ever.' It's a snapshot in time. I would not consider Jenson to be the best driver out there for any other year so far, but IMO he was unquestionably the best this year.
I see your point, as I said in my first post I had difficulty in choosing between 5 drivers. I still rate Vettel higher in 2009 because in my opinion his mistakes were to be expected from an inexperienced F1 driver, whereas Button's dip was from an experienced driver, therefore I gave him less leeway. Vettel seemed to make the best use of his equipment more consistently (throughout the season) than any other driver, so I put him fractionally ahead.
