ISTANBUL — Formula One leader Jenson Button offered no apologies on Thursday for Brawn GP’s runaway success in a championship that is providing little drama.
Button has won five of the first six races coming into the Turkish Grand Prix to hold a 16-point lead over teammate Rubens Barrichello. Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel trails by 28 points in third, 3.5 points more than teammate Mark Webber.
“I think that we’ve achieved a lot this year,” Button said from Istanbul Park Circuit. “Us being quick shouldn’t be a negative either — we’re here to do the best job that we can and that’s what we’ve done. That’s what this sport is all about.”
Brawn GP has best interpreted the major aerodynamic rule changes for this season, which almost started without the team after Honda pulled out of the sport in December. Brawn GP reached the starting grid thanks to a management buyout two weeks before the start of the season.
“It’s impossible to believe they are going to lose the championship,” Ferrari’s Felipe Massa said. “For me, it’s already over.”
That would mean no exciting duels to the final race.
“That’s something that this championship with the new rules didn’t achieve this year,” said two-time champion Fernando Alonso, who longed for the past three seasons when it was “three drivers, three different teams fighting for championship.”
“This year it’s more a fight between teammates. This is not good.”
Rules are likely to get even more interesting from 2010.
The Formula One Teams Association and FIA remain at loggerheads over the future of the sport, especially a $60 million budget cap that the governing body wants to push through.
Ferrari has threatened to quit over the cap, while FIA president Max Mosley has challenged the 10 teams to break away and start their own series.
“We’ve been doing (the rules) for 60 years and we’ll continue to do it in the future,” Mosley said. “Now, we have a dispute and we’ll see who prevails.”
Button is happy to have helped relegate perennial favorites like Ferrari and McLaren toward the pack of the grid.
“It means a lot beating those teams, it’s what we’re all here to do,” Button said. “The way this season has been for us has been fantastic, and I don’t think it would be correct if it wasn’t the same in the coming years.”
Defending champion Lewis Hamilton of McLaren and 2007 winner Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari are 42 points behind Button, while Alonso of Renault is 40 back. Massa is 43 back with 11 races left.
Williams driver Nico Rosberg will be a free agent next season and is unsure what the starting grid will look like.
“It is very difficult to understand for next year what is the best team to go to and things like that,” Rosberg said.
BMW Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld wants the dispute between FIA and FOTA to be over.
“It’s a strange situation. I want to do my best job here and fully concentrate on the driving but politics in the last couple of races have been extreme, especially regarding the future of the sport,” Heidfeld said. “I just hope that a solution can be found to keep Formula One as it is with the best teams, the best drivers. I’d like to stay there.”
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