McLaren F1 Team for scarifying Jenson

Christian Horner accuses McLaren F1 Team for scarifying Jenson Button in the Japanese GP in order to allow Lewis Hamilton to fight for the podium.

Jenson Butto was the only driver of the first 10 on the starting grid which started the Japanese Grand Prix with prime tires, as the Brit’s  strategy was to stay on the track as much as possible to recover the gap that separated him from the drivers in front of him.

Although he became leader after all four title chasers have entered the pits, Button was not capable to get far enough, but he chose to stay on track instead of changing his hard tires with soft ones to fight for the 4th place with LewisHamilton. The strategy proved to be wrong, but Button climbed on 4th place afterHamilton had gearbox problems.

The way McLaren F1 Team managed the race strategy made Christian Horner, Red Bull F1 Team boss, believe that Button was a “sacrificial lamb” to keep Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso behind and help Hamilton, even though both drivers still have title chances.

“We were a bit concerned by Jenson’s race strategy, as we knew we would come out behind him and then he started to back everybody up towards Hamilton. It was sort of like being in a McLaren sandwich. But then it looked like Hamilton developed a problem and they aborted that strategy for Jenson. It looked a little bit like he was a sacrificial lamb. I don’t know. It just seemed strange,” said the Brit for Daily Telegraph.

Even so, McLaren denied this hypothesis by Martin Whitmarsh’s voice, who admits that Button’s strategy was wrong.

“Yes there was [the possibility to do that], but at that point we also had to consider Jenson. We wanted to give him enough time on the option tire, to have a go. If we had left him out there longer… it is not how we play our game. Maybe others would but that is not how we go motor racing,” McLaren F1 Team’s boss explained.