Relaxed Button buckles up for Brazilian battle

JENSON BUTTON has insisted he will never accept team orders but will know himself when the time is right to help McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton’s title challenge.

Button is 42 points adrift of Formula One championship leader Fernando Alonso and nothing but a win in Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix will do if the reigning world champion is to remain in the hunt ahead of the final race in Abu Dhabi.

The chances of a Button win look slim though, with the Red Bull pair of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber dominating both practice sessions yesterday. Button was fourth and then seventh in the respective runs.

However, the English racer is adamant that team boss Martin Whitmarsh has enough confidence in him to trust his judgement over when he should serve the best interests of the team without needing to order him to do so.

“I will never be ordered to do anything,” he said. “I think Martin and myself, in the short period we’ve been together over the last year, have learnt a lot about each other and he knows he doesn’t have to talk to me. I’m intelligent enough to make my own decision, and the right decision when it happens.

“My main focus is to go out and try to win the race, and if that’s not possible, we’ll see what happens. Second to that, the team is important, so yeah, I will do what I feel is correct.”

Hamilton is 21 points behind Alonso and in need of all the help he can get if he is to overhaul his former team-mate.

“It’s a different scenario for all three teams,” Hamilton admitted. “The Red Bulls are really battling it out. Then you have Ferrari where (Felipe) Massa has supposedly said he is going to do everything to help Fernando, which is a completely different situation.

“Then you’ve the position here where we’re both trying to win. Nevertheless, we have a great relationship and one generally where you would assist in a way, maybe.”

The same cannot be said of Red Bull where, despite their drivers’ form on the track, relations are seemingly strained. Mark Webber’s remarks this week that his championship charge seems to be “inconvenient” to the team — which he feels is emotionally favouring Vettel — has caused a significant stir.

The German is in desperate need of a win on Sunday to retain any hope of claiming his first ever F1 title and was just over a tenth ahead of his Australian team-mate at the end of Practice Two, with championship leader Alonso third and a further two tenths back.

Hamilton was fourth and just ahead of Ferrari’s Massa, while Robert Kubica showed well for Renault, claiming sixth. Button could only manage the seventh quickest time.

Ferrari will be worried about Alonso’s engine situation however, having seen their driver come to a halt in the dying minutes of morning practice. The Spaniard has already used up his allotted eight power units for the season — with two full race distances still remaining — and is in the highly unusual situation of seeing his engines swapped between sessions. Team-mate Massa suffered clutch failure in the afternoon run, all of which points to an anxious weekend ahead for the Scuderia.

The only other two incidents of note were minor crashes for Renault’s Vitaly Petrov and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi, both of whom lost control of their cars through the quick uphill right-hander known as Turn Seven.