Jenson Button: My new car’s driving me crazy

He won’t admit it but Button’s championship challenge is over. McLaren have slipped away from this season’s big four — Red Bull, Ferrari, Lotus and Mercedes — to the extent that none of that quartet’s drivers even talk of McLaren as realistic challengers just five races into the season.

Button deflects such conversation: “When you drive a racing car, you don’t think about where you’re going to be. You don’t think about next week. You don’t think about what’s going on, you think about the moment you’re in. You think about what’s happening with the car, the balance and how to make the balance better. That’s what’s in my head, not the world championship.”

However much the car might be stuttering, it remains Button’s real refuge, which might seem hard to comprehend bearing in mind the 200mph top speeds they reach.

“I like being in the car and away from everything else,” he says. “Even when times are tough, you enjoy trying to make the car better. But it’s not just me. There are a lot of intelligent people trying to improve the car. Sooner or later we’re going to have to make a bigger step than we are right now.”

McLaren have a history of turning things around.

They did so with an absolute pig of a car in 2009 that went from backmarker to double-race winner before the season was over.

The pressure to improve — at least in driver terms — rests squarely on Button’s broad shoulders as the experienced driver with relative novice Sergio Perez in the other McLaren

Is it fair to suggest the team are missing Lewis Hamilton, who has enjoyed a positive switch to Mercedes? “I’m not missing Lewis,” says Button, and not in a way that implies an aversion towards his fellow Briton. “This is a role [as team leader] I’ve enjoyed for many years at different teams. Even when Lewis was here I felt my opinion was valid and very important. I think nothing’s really changed.”

There was no great love lost between Button and Hamilton and some intriguing fissures appeared after two races between Button and his new team-mate following what the older of the two perceived as some unnecessarily aggressive driving tactics from his colleague.

It led former grand prix driver John Watson to suggest Button needed to toughen up. In response, he says: “I’ve had many races in the past where I’ve been aggressive. In the race in Bahrain [two rounds previously on the calendar] maybe I was even too aggressive. But it’s not of interest for me to comment on that, it doesn’t make me go any quicker.”

As for the clash with Perez, he adds: “It’s in the past and done with.”

Their run-in, though, threw up a wider issue of the Pirelli tyres in F1. Both drivers were at different stages in their race, Button was trying to protect his rubber while Perez similarly wanted to avoid being in the dirty air of his team-mate and aversely affecting his own tyres.

“I hate team orders but you can see why some teams implemented them early in the season,” he says. “It’s because you need to look after those tyres in the first stint. If you’re the guy in front, you’re looking after your tyres, if you’re the guy behind you want to get past as you’re ruining your tyres. It’s so much more complicated these days.

“We want to race hard and it’s great TV. But you need to get the balance right. China was strange. A lot of the overtaking was like ‘after you’ as you had to look after your tyres. You were waving people past and that wasn’t fighting or racing. It’s a tricky one and we’re all struggling. When you think about it, it’s sometimes worse. We just have to get on with it.”

Button is currently on a multi-year deal at McLaren and there is no sense that either party want to change that despite the current struggles. He does not quite say he wants to end his career with the British outfit but, as things stand, he most likely will.

“It’s my fourth year at McLaren — that’s a long time,” he points out.

“The results haven’t been great this year but I still love the atmosphere. In an especially difficult season, you really learn about people.”

Should his F1 career end abruptly — as it very nearly did when Honda pulled the plug on their F1 operation — then he would be relatively content having won the title in 2009 at Brawn GP, very much the phoenix from the Honda flames.

“I’d be pretty happy with my career but while there’s still a chance of hearing 750 horsepower under you and while there’s still a big grin on my face as I come out of the pits, I want to be an F1 driver,” he says.

“Winning the world title is something that can never be taken away from me. It’s huge and it takes time to sink in. But race wins are still very special.

“You’re so in the moment, the chequered flag being waved, your team going crazy, friends and family in tears. So I still aspire to those and it’s obvious that if you get enough of those you win the world championship.”

A repeat of that feat four seasons ago — and just before he joined McLaren — is a long way off. Button goes into Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix with a mere 17 points in the drivers’ championship compared to current leader Sebastian Vettel with 89.

Scrapping for the minor points in the principality seems to be the best that he can hope for.