Posted 21 April 2019 - 19:25
In defence of 2009, I've never seen that season the way lots seem to regarding Button. From what I saw Jenson won that crown fair and square by doing two things utterly brilliantly.
1. When Brawn came out in Barcelona testing with a neat double diffuser and a big pace advantage, he then leapt on it completely, absolutely nailed those early races when the car was at its best, poles, wins, 10pts, 10pts, 10pts. Using the (weak) argument about 'winning cars' etc then, with two Barrichellos in that Brawn, it would have been a competitive but not dominant proposition in those early races, but in Button's hands he nailed six wins from seven and quite frankly pretty much won the WDC from that alone.
2. When Red Bull overtook Brawn, as Ferrari, McLaren et al developed their way up onto their pace at the front, as Brawn inevitably slipped back due to the extremely limited development they could do compared to the other teams....Button just got his head down and kept his points total ticking over, fourth, fifth, third....when he needed to get a certain result at Interlagos from way back on the grid, he drove one of his best ever races, inch perfect, fearless, unflappable, and got the result he needed.
Oh, people say, but Barrichello won two races in that second half of the year - yeah, sure, but races where Brawn were right up there were the exception rather than the rule and at Monza Barrichello headed a throwback to the early season dominant 1-2 after they nailed a one-stop strategy to leapfrog Hamilton and co, and I think Jenson was by then happy to bank 8 points.
I think he played the whole thing perfectly.