Jenson Button was sick in Singapore

Very consistent since his victory in Hungary, Jenson Button can boast of being the one who prevented Sebastian Vettel from being crowned in Singapore. A second place that might have turned into a victory if the luck that led to the safety car’s deployment had also extended to the absence of backmarkers between the leader and his runner-up at the restart.

Interviewed by the Press Association, Button nevertheless revealed that the race was not easy: “I was sick [Sunday] morning. I don’t know where it came from, but when you have that, you are completely dehydrated. I was a kilo and a half lighter than I usually am in the morning, and gaining that weight back was quite difficult.” Singapore is one of the most challenging races of the Formula 1 season due to its length but especially because of the heat and humidity. Jérôme D’Ambrosio, for example, revealed to RMC that he lost more than three kilos during the race.

« So I was “Immodium-ized”, I ate a lot of pasta because carbohydrates help to better absorb liquid and I drank a lot of special drinks from Aki Hintsa (doctor of the McLaren team), drinks based on saltwater, » indicated the 2009 world champion. « So I was fine during the race, I managed to regain my weight ».

Jenson Button says he is proud to have prevented Sebastian Vettel from celebrating the title in Singapore, while stating that we all know it will happen at the next race. The native of Frome reveals his main goal for the end of the season: I have a goal, starting from Hungary and during the second half of the season, which is to beat Seb in terms of points. It’s going to be difficult. I am the second-highest point scorer so far, and that has to be the goal of the season – to score more points than the others – and, hopefully, to score more points than Seb in the second half of the year.

The main goal is to win races. We tried [Sunday], it didn’t work, but ultimately I was close to achieving that. These statements align with what Martin Whitmarsh said to our colleagues at Autosport: Jenson is second in the championship and he deserves it, but we can do all the introspective analyses we want; what we need to do is be as fast as we can, not make mistakes, be as performant as possible, and we can win races. We have won four races this season [note: China, Canada, Germany, Hungary], some of them were fantastic, and we would like to win more. And there are still five we can win.