Malaysia: Jenson Button Q&A

Jenson, have you come down since Melbourne?

Yeah, definitely. It is only a week between races, so you are straight back into it. It has obviously been a great feeling after the weekend in Melbourne. I think it was a very special weekend, for myself and for the whole team but we very quickly had to look forward to the next chapter and look forward to the race this weekend.

This circuit has been quite good for you. You have had a front row start and a couple of third places here. How good is the car going to be and how optimistic are you about the car as you have tested it on a couple of circuits and it's been very competitive there. It was very competitive in Australia. Is it going to be a car that is good everywhere?

You have got to hope so. In winter testing we were strong on two different circuits, strong in Melbourne, and you would expect us to be competitive here. Nobody knows yet how competitive compared to the rest of the field. But I enjoy this circuit. I really do. It is a very fast flowing circuit and I think it will suit our car pretty well. There are some very low speed corners which I think will suit us. Also, mechanically our car is strong. I am looking forward to getting out on the circuit tomorrow. Weather-wise it is going to be a lot trickier this weekend than in Melbourne. We had a few safety cars thrown into the mix to make it exciting but here with the weather it is going to be difficult to know what is going to happen over the race weekend.

How does it feel to have the best car?

It is a new feeling and it feels great. I think a few of us have sat here and been in competitive cars in the past. It is obviously a good feeling. The strange thing is after the winter we had and the last couple of years you do the first race and you win it and it is obviously exciting and quite emotional but you get over that pretty quick and you are on to the next race. You get used to being at the front very quickly, I suppose it is because it's what we have all done in the categories leading up to Formula One.

You've been distracted by the weather. You go into this race favourite to win back-to-back victories. Are you worried that the forecast wet weather and diminishing light with the late staging of the race could undermine your performance this weekend? We know that Rubens is super-strong in the wet. Can you explain a little bit about your approach to driving in the wet?

Well, I've actually done OK driving in the wet myself, so I'm not too worried about that. The last two years we've come to circuits hoping for rain because it throws a bit of excitement into the race for us because we would normally be hanging around at the back but here, when you've got a quick car you obviously want it to be dry and you don't want any safety cars, you don't even want a breath of wind. So for sure, I would rather it was just dry this weekend but looking at the weather forecast it's going to be storms in the afternoons and obviously it's a five o' clock race. It makes it more difficult and a bit more challenging for sure but we'll take it in our stride hopefully and hopefully have a good car in the wet. We haven't tested in the wet yet with our car but it's a good car and we've just got to hope it works in the wet. The only thing we've got to work out is the front wing angles and what-have-you because previous cars we've had we've had to adjust massively for the wet conditions, so hopefully we're going to have some wet running before the race.

How much is the wider gap affecting you guys in the race, how much is it going to change strategy over the coming races?

I think they've done it to make it more exciting between the tyres choices and a few more different strategies. Obviously it made a big difference with the safety cars in Melbourne because the softer tyre was graining for most people, so it threw it up in the air a little bit which was good. Here we have a soft tyre and a hard tyre. The hard tyre we haven't run yet in testing, so that's going to be interesting to see if we can get it to work here. I think it's going to take a couple of laps to get heat into it. It's going to be difficult to work out which is the better tyre and which is the tyre for the race but that's obviously what we'll be doing tomorrow.

Do you think here we are going to see the same situation as in Melbourne with Brawn with a huge advantage over the others? Do you think it's going to be tighter or do you expect even more of a gap?

I don't know, we have to wait and see. I've already answered this question really, but we don't really know how much advantage we had in Melbourne either. It's difficult to say with the safety cars and what-have-you but it wasn't a perfect weekend in Melbourne. If we get a perfect weekend here, obviously we'll be looking strong but this is a very different circuit and I think that some of the other teams could be strong here. And I think that the cars with KERS, as far as we know, will have a bigger advantage than they had in Melbourne, so they are obviously to watch out for, especially Ferrari, so we wait and see. We hope we've got an advantage but we won't know until qualifying on Saturday.

Who do you think will cope with you as you seem unbeatable at the moment?

Difficult to say after one race, really, that we're unbeatable. I don't know. Red Bull were obviously quick, quicker than what we expected in Melbourne. I didn't think that they would be the team that would be up at the front. I also think that Ferrari will catch up, they always do. Those two teams are the teams for me that are going to be competitive going forward and also BMW. It's a very strange mix with teams this year. It seems to be very close, we seem to have a slight advantage and then everyone else is very close and in the mix. It makes it exciting and I think different people will stand out at this race.

I would just like to know if only the weather can change the first two steps on the podium for Sunday?

I hope not. Apart from that, what can I say? If it's raining like that it's about keeping on the circuit, and I've struggled with that in the past couple of years in the wet.

Sorry, my question was can only the weather make the change, the difference? Is there somebody else who can fight for victory in this Grand Prix?

Rubens?

If the FIA confirms that the cars from Brawn, Toyota and Williams are all legal, as is very possible, do you think that we will have a new start to the season at the Spanish Grand Prix with all teams changing their cars and new teams will come to the top and others going down?

Barcelona is the first race where I think you will see packages on cars. Everyone's going to be making a step forward this year and obviously there is a mass of rule changes, so people could make big, big steps forward, I think, coming into the European races. And for sure, all of the cars at the front will have to watch out for that. The season is not over, we've only had one race and I think that with the rule changes, people can make big steps forward. It's about us being able to keep up with them more than anything, with the steps in performance.