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Articles by Darren Galpin
| Hungaroboring - Sun 15th Aug 2004 |
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The Hungaroboring is a dry and dusty bowl of a track outside of Budapest. It doesn't lend itself much to overtaking, and so it proved on the weekend. Once the drivers had sorted themselves out at the start, the two Ferrari's pootled off into the distance and won as they pleased, and in their natural order. The lack of undue excitement meant that the race provided a decent amount of time to help gently digest the Sunday lunch.
The excitement was all off track, with the story of Buttongate filling the headlines. It would seem as though Button's management were on the legal ball, whereas BAR's were slightly remiss in how they handled things. Button's contract with BAR expired this year, but there was an option which BAR could take up to secure his services for the following year, and it had to be exercised by a certain time. It would seem as though BAR missed this by a couple of days, and anticipating this, Button's management contacted Williams, and a contract was sorted out. Somehow word of this was leaked to the media, specifically the newspapers, so to pre-empt the breaking news, Sir Frank Williams announced the news live on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Given that Dave Richards and BAR had shown some faith in Button after what could be considered his wilderness years at Renault, many people consider that Button's activities lack integrity, and don't reward the loyalty shown by Richards. This may be true, but consider the reverse situation - would BAR show the same degree of loyalty and integrity to Button if Michael Schumacher suddenly became available to them? Of course not - it's a dog eat dog world, and not for nothing is the Formula 1 paddock known as the Piranha Club.
The interesting question is whether Williams will be a better package next year than BAR. Given this years performances, you would suggest that this is questionable, but Williams have been there and done it several times, whereas BAR never has. And what about the commitment of Honda? It has taken them a long time to build a half decent engine, and with proposed rule changes afoot which could affect engine capacity, how long will it take them to get around the new ideas and come up with a competitive unit? Plus Williams is the team which gave Button his F1 break, so he knows that he will feel at home there. Button summed up his move by saying that he thought that Williams would give him the better chance at winning the world championship - you can't really disagree with that.
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