Button denies braking early at Spa
Date published : 02 Sep 2010 - 17:21:16
Jenson Button has rebutted the claim by Red Bull team boss Christian Horner that he caught Sebastian Vettel unawares by braking earlier than usual prior to their collision in the Belgian Grand Prix.Vettel was attempting to pass Button on lap 16 of the race when he jinked out of the McLaren's wake under braking for the Bus Stop chicane and lost control, slamming into the side of his rival's car.Many observers felt Vettel's impetuosity was to blame, but Horner suggested the German was caught out by Button braking earlier than expected on the greasy track.At the end of the day Jenson had a slightly damaged car, he was a lot slower, and obviously he was driving defensively which he's perfectly entitled to do, but it took Sebastian by surprise just how early he did brake for the chicane, said Horner.Button insists the telemetry from his car proves otherwise, however.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, he told his website on Thursday.I'd had to crank more front wing in to help the handling, and that had made the back end a bit more skittish, so I was just driving carefully. I knew I still had good straight-line speed, so I was concentrating on getting into the slower corners cleanly, so that I could maximise my traction at the exit and maintain the gap along the straights.But that's just common sense when you're racing.After the race, I actually checked the data with my race engineer, and it shows that I braked at exactly the same point on the lap before the collision.We even looked at the braking profile, and that also showed that, at the point of impact about 1.5s 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.Button remains aggrieved by the crash and says he still can't figure out what Vettel was playing at.My thoughts haven't really changed, to be honest, he said.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.Button had been defending second place at the time of the collision, and following his retirement from the race described the lost points as a massive blow to his title chances.While he concedes his 35-point deficit to championship-leading team-mate Lewis Hamilton is not insurmountable, he says Vettel's blunder has made his task much harder.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] was able to score, he said.I know there are 150 points still up for grabs, but it doesn't help to now be 35 points behind Lewis.On a more positive note, under the old points system, that would still only be about 15 points, so anything's still possible.But at this point in the season, you've got to take every point you can and the incident in Spa certainly didn't help.
