Jenson Button Praises The Teams After An Unpredictable Season

Jenson Button has praised the teams in Formula 1, after a sensationally entertaining season which featured eight different winners throughout the twenty races. This included the usual suspects including Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, but also new races winners such as Pastor Maldonado and Nico Rosberg.

After the Briton clinched his third race victory of the season, Jenson Button proceeded to praise teams such as Williams, Sauber and Force India after they improved vastly over the winter period to challenge for podiums and even race victories on a regular basis throughout the season.

Both Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton jostled for the lead with the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg during the 71-lap Brazilian Grand Prix. Eventually Hulkenberg and Hamilton collided whilst fighting for the lead, but Jenson Button believes the mere fact that a Force India driver led the race shows just how competitive F1 is becoming.

“I think a lot of the teams, the teams that aren’t normally at the front, I think they’ve done a very good job over the winter.” Explained Jenson Button, “But through the year when the bigger teams work out how to use the tyres and also, you know, the development race, suddenly you see a difference towards the end of the season. Not as big as some might have thought.

“I don’t think we would have expected a Force India to be leading the race today. So, I think it shows Formula One is a lot closer than it used to be; in terms of regulations it’s a lot tighter and also with not many regulation changes, it brings the field very close – and I think we’ll see that also next year.”

Apart from the teams’ superb improvement over the winter period prior to the start of the 2012 season, it’s unquestionable that Pirelli’s controversial tyre compounds played a monumental role in creating the unpredictability that quickly became apparent during the opening seven races of the season. Next season Pirelli will once again alter the tyre compounds, with the hope of creating further entertainment similar to this season in 2013.

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Romain Grosjean Becomes 200th Different Driver On The Podium

Romain Grosjean made Formula 1 history in Bahrain, becoming the 200th different driver to step onto the podium since the sports inaugural season in 1950. With Grosjean joining his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen and reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel on the podium, it was all change once again on the top step of the F1 rostrum.

For Grosjean, it was his first step on an F1 podium in only his 11th start. The Frenchman began his career in 2009 with Renault, however he was replaced by Vitaly Petrov for the 2010 season. Grosjean then returned to the GP2 Series and in 2011 won both the GP2 and GP2 Asia Series’.

In 2012, Grosjean has returned to the top tier of motorsport along with his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, and the two have already shown high amounts of competitiveness in only the first four races of the season. Although Grosjean failed to complete more than seven laps in the first two races due to two DNF’s, he seems to have made up for his errors with two points finishes in China and Bahrain.

The last Frenchman to step onto the podium was 14 years ago, when Jean Alesi did so in unforgettable circumstances at the crazy 1998 Belgian Grand Prix for Sauber. The French veteran was joined by the Jordan duo of Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher, who had memorably achieved Jordan’s first F1 victory with a 1-2 finish in the rain at Spa.

Romain Grosjean has ended this drought for France and has returned the French flag to the podium once again, becoming the 21st Frenchman on the podium. He now joins the likes of Jean Alesi, Rene Arnoux, Alain Prost, Didier Pironi and Olivier Panis as French drivers’ who have reached the podium in their career. 

With Grosjean only several races into 2012, his aim now will naturally be to become the first French winner since 1996, when Olivier Panis won the Monaco Grand Prix for Ligier in a race which amazingly saw only three cars eventually cross the finish line at the end of the race, the least amount in F1 history.

Lotus showed promising pace in pre-season testing at both Jerez and Barcelona, with Raikkonen and Grosjean both setting the fastest times throughout the testing period. It now seems that Lotus are beginning to show that pace once again, when it all counts during the race on Sunday. Both Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean know how to win races, and they will undoubtedly be striving to do so in 2012.

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