Button concerned by team's slip in form

By Sarah Holt


Now the brains at Brawn Grand Prix have returned to their offices after a two-week mid-season break, top of their agenda will be how to stop Jenson Button's championship charge running out of steam.

The Englishman stormed into a seemingly unassailable lead in the title race following six wins in the first seven races of the season but since then the team have lost their way.

Button, who has not finished on the podium in the last three races, has seen his lead cut to 18.5 points by Red Bull's Mark Webber.

With seven races still to come, the prospect of finishing the 2009 season empty-handed is now a very real threat - as Button has said, if Webber keeps cutting into his advantage at this rate, he will have overtaken after another four races.

Brawn and Button have only 11 days to turn things around before first practice at the European Grand Prix in Valencia on 21 August sets in motion the final frantic push for the titles.

We know the car is still quick, we just need to work out why it has become so sensitive

The Brawn car's incompatibility with race conditions in the last three races in Britain, Germany and Hungary has been at the heart of the team's fading fortunes.

In cooler weather, Brawn have struggled to heat up their tyres to the optimum working temperatures and even in Budapest, where the sun shone, the team say the tyres were still 20C lower than they needed them to be.

"We know the car is still quick," insisted Button's race engineer Andrew Shovlin. "We just need to work out why it has become so sensitive to conditions.

"At the moment there is such a small window where it is working really well and we can't cope with that. We need to fix it so it's quick on any track and in any temperature."

In Valencia, in theory, heat should not be an issue - although they said the same about Hungary before that race, too.

Even if the weather is hot in Spain, Brawn still need to understand how to eke out extra performance from the tyres.


Button has had to go increasingly defensive as the season has developed
But it is not only tyre performance that Brawn want to bring up to scratch, the car needs honing, too.

The team arrived in Hungary with a major upgrade, adding a new diffuser, rear wing and bodywork, but the expected step forward in performance failed to materialise, despite encouraging running during Friday practice.

Team principal Ross Brawn conceded after the race that the team needed to "unravel" the recent updates.

"But it's not as simple as going back to an old car specification," added Shovlin. "That's not the answer; it is something much more subtle than that.

"We may have done something to the car to make it more sensitive."

Now that the workforce has returned from the two-week factory shutdown agreed by all the teams, the process of sieving through just what has gone wrong can begin.

This is the best opportunity I've had in F1 and I have to take it - we can't just sit around and collect points; it is not enough

Even if an answer is found, putting the solution into practice is another matter.

"The problem this year is the budget," revealed Shovlin, hinting at an issue that has remained largely under wraps this season.

Despite leading the constructors' standings all season, Brawn have failed to attract a title sponsor.

The team's dalliance with Virgin boss Richard Branson has run its course, while other offers are understood to have been deemed unsuitable by the independent team.

Brawn emerged at the 11th hour last winter out of the ashes of the former Honda team, after the Japanese car giant quit F1 in December.

And while Brawn are understood to be fully funded to the end of this season, they have so far failed to secure a budget for 2010.

So they are having to use their available resources more judiciously than might be the case for big players such as McLaren or Ferrari, both of whom have made noticeable steps forward in performance in recent races.


Red Bull drivers Webber and Vettel are eating into Button's points lead
The ban on in-season testing is also standing in the way of a quick fix to Brawn's problems. Just like everyone else, Brawn must cram up on the latest feedback on tyre performance and technical tweaks during race weekends.

All of this would not matter quite so much, of course, if Brawn still held their substantial early-season performance advantage over the rest of the grid.

As it is, their rivals have passed them on the track and are now eating into their championship lead.

Red Bull have captured three victories, with Webber emerging narrowly ahead of German rising star Sebastian Vettel as Button's closest challenger for the drivers' crown, and their car is expected to dominate at the Belgium GP at Spa-Francorchamps at the end of the month.

McLaren and world champion Lewis Hamilton returned to winning ways in Hungary and the team predict they will be on top form again around Valencia's street circuit.


In one way, this could play into Button's hands - with a multitude of potential winners, it becomes harder for either Red Bull driver to amass the points they need to catch and pass him.

On the other hand, lots of fast cars means Button could be resigned to finishing at the bottom of the points positions - so if a Red Bull driver does score big, they could take a significant chunk out of his lead in one go.

Button knows that, in this case, attack is the best form of defence.

The 29-year-old has squeezed every drop of performance out of his car at virtually every race this season - despite his lowly finishes in the last three races.


Button's last win was in Turkey more than a month ago
He is now relying on the focused driving - no mistakes, no crashes, no settling for a finish - that propelled him into the lead in the first place to fend off those fighting to deny him a first world title.

"This opportunity is the best I have had in Formula 1 by far and I have to take it," he told BBC Sport.

"We have got to stay relaxed and make sure we get back to the front, which we will in Valencia.

"We can't just sit around and collect points; it is not enough.

"But we've been through more difficult times so we can solve these problems I'm sure."