Exactly as my post above - Lewis is consistently 0.4 - 0.5 seconds faster than Button, whatever the gap.

Conclusive proof I'd say.

Just looked at it. Wow the difference is brutal! when they both had open air, Lewis was on average 7 tenths (or more) faster. always over half a second and in some cases even more than a second faster.

Look at laps 17 to 31.

And don't forget the gap to massa was lower than button's gap to schummy...

More than an excuse, Jenson is simply starting out the new season how he finished the last, a front end midfielder. Only difference is Ferrari are now stronger, and McLaren aren't as competitive because they has switched competitive focus they would have had with Hamilton and used that enegry to make Button feel snug.

The rude awakening for Button and McLaren is that the other competitive teams aren't pussy footing around, they are getting on and doing the biz.

You sure Button was not in the pits on lap 17?

Gosh I hope I am replying to the right poster this time

Lap 16...

i think all those people grabbing at straws about dirty air/clean. they forget that he lost out by pure pace in Q2 and Q3 to hamilton. he just didnt have the speed. whether this is because he just needs a little more time to get used the car then sure.

but i think we all deep down know it was no suprise to see Hamilton beat him pretty comfortably. the whole world apart from Jenson and his most dedicated fans recognise Lewis is just too fast, hes a very special racer, Jenson has never been recognised in the same class as hamilton or alonso or any of the other special drivers.

personally as a mclaren fan im hoping jenson improves, perhapshe can take some pointers from lewis, sometimes its just better to grit your teeth and ask your teammate for advice no where to improve time. Hamilton will have learned a lot from Alonso, i think Button needs to do the same if he wants to raise his game.

Please help me out here, am I seeing things wrong, because lap 17 shows (on my pc anyway) Button was 21 seconds slower than Hamilton.

That is not normal, please tell me I am reading this wrong.

Car 1 is Button, Car 2 Hamilton. HELP

Please tell me I am wrong.

That was the pitstop.

That was the lap after he pit so he would have had a slower lap.

Was his outlap....

So he pitted on that lap PHEW!

Hey the Mclaren was only 3rd fastest car so he couldnt have done much better anyways, im just basically replying to people i disagree with.

Also its different from not performing when you have a race winning car like Heikki had in 2008, im sure in a good car Button would score decent points for McLaren

Oh I see

Why did people pick Jenson's out lap to compare times? Out laps can be sensitive periods anyway.

Apparently when Jenson was in clean air he was still conserving tyres

Would Kovalainen have scored points if McLaren fielded the 3rd best car? I suspect he'd have disappeared down the order as he was prone to do. Button did OK in his first race, I think he'll get closer as the season progresses - the car will improve and so will he. Maybe he's not on Hamilton's level but he should prove a very strong teammate.

That is what you call a schumacher classic, NOT!

What the hell was going on in Jenson's head yesterday I do not know, even Kimi would have put the hammer down.

You are making a habit of talking to yourself.

I guess when Lewis was sat for lap after lap just 0.6s behind Rosberg he must have been having one hell of a ride in all that turbulence

Except by Kevin Eason of 'The Times' who is now the official F1 blogger after he took over from the equally useless Ed Gorman.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/for...icle6880955.ece Greatest F1 drivers of all time.

Kevin has Button at no. 16 and Lewis at no. 21. He says this of Lewis: "Youngest world champion who exploded into F1 - but is he really that good? In the best car of the past two years yet makes too many mistakes and is competing in, arguably, a Formula One field short of star talent. No arguing, though, with his exciting style but the jury is out on whether he will attain the status of a legend although 2009 was, arguably, his best season, wrestling with a difficult car yet still getting the job done."

And this about Button: "We originally billed Button’s career as “what-might-have-been”. But now Button has realized all that potential so many people doubted. He remains supremely gifted, rarely making mistakes and capable – as he proved in Brazil to take the title – of breathtaking overtaking manoeuvres. Sometimes he is too understated for his own good but he will be one of the most popular of champions among his peers in Formula One."

I thought the bolded bit was especially hilarious seeing as he has competed against Alonso (in the same team) and Vettel and Kimi.

Apparently Jenson was coasting

I'll give him just that, he is just a little bit better than Heikki.

I call Jenson the driving pooper scooper, good at cleaning up the points left lingering after the best have got theirs and great at cleaning up after drivers mistakes, yesterday he drove like he was waiting for someone to make a mistake, he could not even capture Vettels mechanic failure that is how SMOOTH he took his race.

Just wondering why Alonso doesnt need to settle into the Ferrari team though?

He does not make mistakes because he is a boring driver, he can handle an F1 car sure, but Button is not an out and out racer like Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel or Massa. Racers make mistakes because the are braking later than everyone else and pushing harder. ALL the drivers can CHILL like Button or wait for a double diffuser type of advantage but then F1 would become BORING.

True.

He was a fair bit faster than Hamilton at that point, of course.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I heard Felipe's engineer asking him to save power... To me Ferrari has already established Massa as the 2nd driver, another reason why Ferrari didn't pair Alonso and Kimi.

Apparently he was either in dirty air or conserving tyres and not for once pushed the limits of his car, given that they may well have just have kept Heikki for whats required this year

dude havent u gloated enough, why are u so mad at dude...chillout

18 races to go

See post 2176

I don't gloat I only state facts.

How many races has Jenson won in the last 11 races?

If he has not won one, I do not give him much hope for the remain 18 now everyone has got the race killing double diffuser on their cars.

He has only been on the podium twice in the last 11 races!

Yes a 16 lap sequence where both drivers were running in clean air, Lewis pulls away from Jenson by 13 seconds by an average of 0.8s a lap, doesnt matter though the line will be that Jenson was conserving tyres. Answer me this though can you afford to coast for 16 laps in a 49 lap race?

Its Buttons out lap ignore it, look at the rest

Its what his supporters are saying in order to justify the lap time difference to Lewis, make of it what you will

Explain?

Yes ive already asked you to explain that

Make what you will of the fact that Yorkie's ignoring post 2176.

A british Nick Heidfeld. Good, but not good enough. Nick was proud of the fact that he finished so many races without a retirement. If you're not messing up every now and again you're not pushing hard enough.

Look at the link to times.

He was faster than Hamilton before the pit stops. When he was pushing and not trying to conserve tyres.

It's not complicated.

Guess you didn't watch Brazil 2009 then?

Nor could the two cars in front of him: Rosberg and Schumacher. Button finished 7th on a day when the car looked 3rd/4th best (around Mercedes level), which is in the ballpark. McLaren haven't been able to get both drivers to perform to the level of the car since Alonso was there, so all-in-all this was a welcome result. I don't know what you get from denigrating Button so much, you just belittle Hamilton's results - because you seem to be saying that anything less than Hamilton's result is useless; I'd say that Hamilton flattered the car (as usual). Bahrain was a difficult track for McLaren yet both drivers did OK.

Yes, those very few laps was when Lewis was about 0.6 seconds behind Rosberg so was being slowed down by him, whereas Button wasn't as near to Webber.

I don't know how you can say having a few laps faster than Hamilton when Hamilton was on Rosberg's tail proves that Button is faster. Unless you were being ironic and sarcastic?

Yes. He certainly felt it enough.

I imagine if you look back through my posts you'll realise that I'm a long long way from saying that. But I'm being neither ironic nor sarcastic.

Because his car wasn't good enough. How many times was Hamilton on the podium in the first half of the season?. Jesus Christ give the man a chance. No one else really made any places up after the first couple of laps. He qualified 8th and finished 7th. A small mistake in quali and the team and himself under-estimated the tyres endurance and he still managed to race well. At least he didn't go backwards like Heiki.

I can't see how based on one race you can say he is sooo much worse than Hamilton. I prefer Lewis and not a huge fan of Jenson but at least I can see he has potential and writing him off this early is really unfair.

Not even the same, Lewis was without 50% less downforce, the new unbalancing KERS system and without the double diffuser, not even the same at all. And he more or less finished infront of Heikki most of the time. There is not one race with the improvements or with a dog of a car Lewis held back, conserved his tyres and didnt push hard.

I believe he made three mistakes last year, Australia liegate, Monaco smashed it in qualifying, and Spa trying to catch Jenson....but by golly he gave it everything his got whether the car was a dog or not, and this is why his fans have not abandoned him at all.

What is there to ignore?

You see so many negative post about 1 driver, so when he is beaten by his teammate the other side comes out with even more negative posts. Can we not try and break these cycles ?

Just like all human beings, drivers have their good weekends and bad weekends. Jenson said he made the mistake of being too conservative with his tyres, so we know he can do better. We know that Jenson likes his car to be perfectly balanced for him to produce his best and we know that Lewis can drive the wheels off his car no mater how it is handling. We know that Mclaren made a mistake in the setup of the cars which could not handle the bumps very well in sector 2 and cost them too much time, so the cars didn't have the perfect balance for this GP.

So in my opinion, we haven't seen both drivers drive their very best yet and we can't say that the 0.4 or whatever seconds a lap Lewis was faster over Jenson is the true indication of the speed difference between the 2 drivers.

My own opinion is that Lewis is the better driver, but that does not mean he will definitely beat Jenson every race or even over the whole season. I think there is more than a good chance he will score more points over the season, but I will bet my house on it.

The undeniable fact that at that point, when Button was pushing and not conserving his tyres he was faster than Hamilton.
Which is exactly as significant as the periods where Hamilton was lapping faster than Button.
Which is not significant at all.

The only difference you can point to with any justification last weekend is in qualifying performance. I don't understand why it's not enough to say Lewis outqualified Jense, so he had a better weekend. Nobody can argue with that.

It's one race. Button was a little off the pace during qualy, which hampered his entire race. It happens. People writing off Jenson after one race must have started watching F1 about 3 days ago.