Hamburg, Oct 5 (DPA) Jenson Button’s stuttering finish to the 2009 Formula One season continued at the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka and while Brawn GP teammate Rubens Barrichello may have failed to take full advantage Sebastian Vettel certainly did.
The Red Bull driver celebrated his third win of the season to cut the gap to Button to 16 points with just two races remaining and keep his slim championship hopes alive.
While Vettel continues to refuse to shave as long as he has a chance of being crowned world champion, Germany’s Bild newspaper presented a photomontage of Button in a Brawn GP nappy to symbolise how the Brawn driver is losing his nerve.
“The Brit is getting slower,” wrote Bild Monday after Button crawled home in eighth-place. “Vettel has 16 points to make up and yesterday he gained nine.”
Although Barrichello sits two points ahead of Vettel and is Button’s closest challenger, The Times highlighted Vettel as potentially the Englishman’s main challenger now.
“The climax of this world championship was supposed to be a private affair between Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, the Brawn GP drivers, who have been stumbling around looking for the finishing line like old men with blindfolds,” wrote the paper.
“While Button remains the favourite, Barrichello has grand plans for his home race in Sao Paulo in a fortnight’s time and Vettel believes he can still win a trophy that, for weeks, seems to have been sitting on a shelf just out of everyone’s reach. Maybe Vettel is going to climb up and snatch it.”
Vettel can draw hope from the 2007 championship race when Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen overturned a 17-point deficit to McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton in the final two races of the season.
However as The Daily Telegraph points out, Button does not appear unduly concerned by Vettel’s late charge ahead of the races in Brazil and Abu Dhabi.
“His cautious approach to the latter part of the season may not have won him huge acclaim but it is likely to win him the world title. Slowly but surely,” it wrote.
The Sun, meanwhile, also remained confident that Button won’t suffer the same fate as compatriot Hamilton two years ago, commenting that “Jenson won’t be a Lew-ser.”
rounak