Button not that much quicker than the rest
Another race another win for Jenson Button. Be careful what you wish for! Even Button is starting to look a little sheepish at his level of dominance, making vague little comments about how entertaining things look for the fans, etc.
The thing is, Button isn’t that much quicker than the rest of them. He’s just, along with his team, doing a consistently better job than the rest of them.
Button’s six wins from seven compares with Nigel Mansell’s dominance with Williams in 1992 and Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 2004. But the difference is that Button’s car is not that much quicker than the rest.
Right now, at the end of the low fuel runs in Q2 on Saturday afternoon, the whole field is covered by less than one and a half seconds with just a few hundredths here and there separating the leading runners. Back in Mansell’s title winning season his active suspension was giving him a sedan ride to the front by more than a second a lap on the next guy.
In 2004 Schumacher would typically watch everyone clean the track for an hour on Friday morning before popping out for a single lap that would put him on top of the timesheets, whereupon he would park it up and wait for the afternoon session to begin the real work on a track that had been suitably prepared for him.