He also explained that Perez, known by his Latin diminutive ‘Checo’ at
McLaren, had been reminded of his responsibilities in strong terms in the
aftermath.
“The one thing I did not approve of was hitting your team-mate,” Whitmarsh
said. “He overstepped the mark. I gave my view on that. But he is young and
still learning. I would prefer to have to pull a racer back rather than have
to push them forward. You would expect a driver to be hardwired to behave as
Checo did in a deadly battle.”
Button was not about to forget the onslaught from Perez quite so easily.
Established as the senior driver at McLaren in the wake of Lewis
Hamilton’s departure, he was clearly affronted by the audacity of a
driver a decade his junior, who arrested a dismal start to life at the
Woking-based team by finishing sixth to Button’s 10th.
“I was so angry and you have to be careful,” he said. “Being in Formula One
for so long, you learn how to control your anger, but you still get close to
your limit and today was one of those days.”
He added: “I’m not used to driving along a straight and having a team-mate
coming alongside me and wiggling his wheels at me, and banging wheels at 300
kilometres an hour.
“That isn’t normally the way I go racing. Maybe it’s the way we go racing now,
but it’s not the way I want to. He touched me from behind and he touched me
on the side going in a straight line at 300 kilometres an hour. That’s
dangerous.
“I’ve had some tough fights in F1, but not quite as dirty as that. Something
serious will happen soon, so he has to calm down.”
On lap 32, where Perez damaged his front wing in a scrape with Button after
they had banged wheels twice, the Briton protested to his team: “Come on,
guys.”
Even with the benefit of greater reflection, he said: “He was too aggressive,
I would say.”
Perez, attempting to soothe the impression of increasing tension at McLaren,
responded: “I think I was as aggressive as he was with me.”
Remarkably, for all the machinations in the midfield, this grand prix
ultimately yielded a carbon copy of the podium in Bahrain 12 months ago, as
the superlative Vettel crossed the line eight seconds clear of the
fast-finishing Lotus pairing of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean.
Vettel, the triple world champion, acknowledged it had been a “beautiful” race
from start to finish, where the peerless pace of his Red
Bull never looked challenged once he had wrested the lead from
pole-sitter Nico Rosberg.
But the battle to seize the advantage had hardly been straightforward. Vettel
was forced to fend off a concerted surge from Fernando Alonso on the first
lap, losing out fleetingly before passing the Spaniard with an audacious
move around the outside into turn five.
Alonso, in many eyes the pre-race favourite given his dominant win in
Shanghai, soon found himself marginalised as he was forced to make two stops
in two laps while suffering a failure of his drag-reduction system.
It was testament to his tenacity that he still contrived to finish eighth on a
day when Vettel reinforced his own credentials to win a fourth consecutive
world title by the age of 26.
It was compelling theatre, even if it was often difficult to gauge the
significance of each individual scrap. The realities of F1 this year, with
the blur of pit-stops and endless tyre-enforced pack-shuffling, meant that
any overarching narrative was replaced by a haphazard sequence of events.
Of these, the respective progress of Mercedes’
cars was among the most mystifying. Where Rosberg drifted from first back to
ninth as a consequence of suspect tyre management, Hamilton grasped a
creditable fifth place in spite of a grid penalty. By then, though, Vettel
was a distant speck on the horizon.
Jenson’s radio rant
McLaren’s Jenson Button felt his team-mate Sergio Pérez had crossed a line
during their wheel-to-wheel duel in mid-race. After the Mexican damaged his
front wing in a scrape with the Briton in lap 32, he shouted over the
radio: “He’s just hit me up the back. Calm him down,” and then added:
“Moving across on the straight and wheel-banging; come on guys.”