Not that Button believes in fate. He joked afterwards that he has stayed in
the same room in the same hotel during each of his three wins here — the
only exception being 2011 when he moved rooms and didn’t win the race.
Has he already booked in for next year? “Maybe I should,” he laughed.
“But I don’t believe in any of that stuff. We did a good job today that’s why
we won. Not because of the room.
“Everyone’s got a lot of confidence; every mechanic, every
engineer, every person. And that makes a difference.
“You can see it from the pit-stops. We’ve got a new pit-stop system and there
hasn’t been that much practice but because there’s confidence in each other
it worked really well. I almost ran over a couple of Red Bull guys as well,
so it was almost perfect.”
There was no ‘almost’ about it. Starting just behind Hamilton on the front row
of the grid, Button made the perfect start, beating his team-mate to turn
one. He never looked back.
Building a 10-second lead he proceeded to control the race, the only threat to
his supremacy coming from his own depleting reserves of fuel.
In a way the safety car which allowed the rest of the field to catch back up
to him on lap 37, after Caterham’s Vitaly Petrov had ground to a halt on the
start-finish straight, was a godsend, meaning he could go easy on the gas.
“From lap eight we were on saving fuel,” McLaren team principal Martin
Whitmarsh admitted later. “We were not quite in the fire but close to it and
hot.”
Behind Button, the action was unrelenting. Mercedes, so fast in qualifying,
found it impossible to get their tyres in the right operating window;
Michael Schumacher began well but retired with gearbox failure on lap 11
trying to fend off Vettel. Nico Rosberg just went steadily backwards.
Ferrari recovered slightly after their disastrous qualifying performance
with Alonso wringing every last drop from the car to limit the damage.
Hamilton, meanwhile, was unfortunate to lose second place to Vettel when the
safety car came out at the wrong moment for him — just after McLaren had
opted to pit him and Button on the same lap — but he admitted afterwards
that he had not been able to manage his tyres as well as his team-mate and
looked utterly dejected at the conclusion to the race.
“I don’t like going backwards in my career,” he explained. “I went back two
places back today. I want to make sure in the next race I am going
forwards.” A fair point, but it was difficult not to wonder whether — more
than the two places lost — Hamilton might have been just a little bit
shocked by the manner in which he was beaten by Button.
After a winter of rest and recuperation out at his base in Denver, the 2008
world champion had come back feeling fit and ready to reassert himself. When
he took pole on Saturday it seemed the script was written for him.
He had reckoned without Formula One’s very own Wizard of Oz, although unlike
the character in the book, Button does not rely on tricks and illusions. The
32 year-old is simply in the form of his career although even he admitted he
wondered at one point whether he was dreaming.
“I actually did pinch myself in the race just to make sure,” he said.
“We haven’t been here before since I have been with the team – so strong at
the start of the season.
“It was very important to us to get this one in the bank very early on. But
you can’t get carried away.”
Leave that to the rest of us. What a season it promises to be.