Jenson Button Remains a Class Act as He Prepares to Leave McLaren and F1
Amid the excitement surrounding Sebastian Vettel's departure from Red Bull and Fernando Alonso's as yet unconfirmed exit from Ferrari to make way for the German, Jenson Button's increasingly weak standing at McLaren was something of an afterthought at last weekend's Japanese Grand Prix.
The 2009 world champion, a McLaren driver since 2010, is likely to be the biggest loser of this year's edition of Formula One's merry-go-round, with Alonso linked by BBC Sport's Andrew Benson with a return to the Woking-based outfit.
Button is currently in the very predicament which all F1 drivers, and most athletes, fear: a loss of control.
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Whatever he does on the track between now and the end of the season will almost certainly have no impact on whether he will remain at McLaren beyond 2014.
He is trapped in a state of limbo and will, in all likelihood, be denied the honour, the privilege, of bringing his own career to an end, currently facing the prospect of being pushed out the door.
His fate lies in the hands of Ron Dennis, the McLaren boss—who was earlier this season quoted by Sky Sports' Pete Gill as encouraging Button to "try harder"—and Alonso, who is unlikely to take a sabbatical to save face and prevent a rapprochement with the team he left under the murkiest of clouds in 2007.
Button has previously admitted that retirement is an option, telling Andrew Benson of BBC Sport at August's Belgian Grand Prix: "If I have to retire at the end of the season then so be it, but I feel I have so much more to give and I can't imagine life without motorsport and especially Formula One."
Watching the 34-year-old's performance at Suzuka on Sunday, however, you would not have believed that this is a driver set to leave it all behind.
The Japanese Grand Prix is an event extremely close to Button's heart from both a professional and personal perspective, with the Frome-born star engaged to the model, Jessica Michibata.
He drove for the Honda team between 2006 and 2008—winning the outfit's only grand prix in Hungary—and claimed victory at Suzuka for McLaren in 2011, a matter of months after the country was hit by an earthquake and tsunami.
The effects of Typhoon Phanfone—which arrived at the track in time for Sunday's grand prix—presented Button, who started eighth, with the perfect platform to secure a strong result at what—as he hinted to the official Formula One website—is likely to be his last F1 race in Japan.
His decision to dive into the pits for intermediates just as the race got underway on the 10th lap—after a safety car start—was the move of an experienced driver, one of great expertise in wet conditions and, perhaps most revealingly, one with nothing to lose.
His lap times in the immediate aftermath of his tyre change—around five seconds quicker than most of those who remained on extreme wet tyres, as per the FIA's race lap analysis data—allowed Button to claim third place behind the dominant Mercedes cars of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.
And there he stayed until his second trip to the the pit lane, where a steering wheel change led to a stop time of 28.547 seconds, as per the FIA's pit stop summary, in contrast to that of Vettel, who inherited third place after a stop which was almost five seconds quicker just two laps earlier.
From that point, Button faced a fight to resist the charges of the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo, with the 2009 world champion's efforts to defend his position—like his manoeuvres in a battle with Sergio Perez at Monza last month—proving that he has lost none of his prowess in wheel-to-wheel combat.
His manoeuvre on the Australian on Lap 40 was a particular highlight, with the McLaren driver sacrificing the inside of the Turn 11 hairpin to switch back and retake the position on the run to Spoon Curve, the next corner.
Button was, in a sense, unfortunate not to cling on to fourth position, with Ricciardo completing his move at the hairpin on Lap 42, at the exact moment the yellow flags began to wave for Adrian Sutil's crash at Dunlop Curve—the incident which sparked the chain of events that led to Jules Bianchi, the Marussia driver, suffering life-threatening injuries in a terrifying accident.
A fifth-place finish, nevertheless, resembled Button's best since his "other" home race, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, where he finished fourth.
It was a timely reminder of his qualities, his class and what he can bring to a Formula One team—yet his current employers and their soon-to-be power unit suppliers, Honda, the organisation he once served so well, were not listening.
Neither company, you suspect, is keen on yesterday's man being the face of what is hoped to be a bright new era, and the driver himself does not deserve the humiliation of dragging out his career with an uncompetitive team.
When the announcement comes, Button can leave McLaren and the sport in the knowledge that he is still among the elite drivers on the grid.
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