McLaren Sporting Director Sam Michael has flatly refuted the widely-held belief that Jenson Button is a more 'sensitive' driver than team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
McLaren believe they've found reason for Jenson's Canada slump
McLaren Sporting Director Sam Michael has flatly refuted the widely-held belief that Jenson Button is a more 'sensitive' driver than team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
In the wake of Button's bewildering slump in form since winning the season-opening Australian GP, it has been suggested that the 2009's World Champion alleged high-pitched sensitivity to car changes may have brought about his dramatic loss of form.
However, according to Michael, Button's driving style is almost identical to Hamilton's and the perception that Jenson can only operate successfully in a narrow 'performance window' is a myth.
"He doesn't require a more precise set-up than Lewis," Michael confirmed to
Sky Sports News. "Most of the time they drive very similar set-up cars. There's always a few little tweaks that the drivers make because they might have a slight difference in style, but he is in no way more sensitive to the car than what Lewis is."
Button has scored just a paltry two points in the last four races, and suffered the ignominy of being lapped by his team-mate in Montreal, but the team are confident they are finally close to ironing out his problems.
"With Jenson in Canada, if you go back to the start of the weekend we had quite a few problems with his gearbox on Friday and he lost a lot of track time because of that. From that point on, we tried a few different things with his car set-up to try to explore different areas, and in hindsight we probably shouldn't have done that," explained Michael.
"The wear profile on his tyres was extremely different to what Lewis had and there are certain reasons for that which we believe we've understood and can easily put right for Valencia."
Click here to read the full Sky Sports News interview with Sam Michael.
