Button’s title dream all but over

Formula One champion Jenson Button recognised on Sunday that his title dream was all but over.

The McLaren driver finished 12th in the inaugural South Korean Grand Prix, leaving him 42 points adrift of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso with just two races, and a total of 50 points, still to be won.

Team mate Lewis Hamilton, who finished second, is now 21 points ahead of him.

Asked whether he was still in the title race, the Briton replied ‘Not really’ before recovering some of his fighting spirit.

“Never say never until it’s mathematically impossible, but with two races to go and given how far I am behind then it’s going to be very difficult from where I am,” the winner of two races this year told reporters.

“It’s pretty much gone.

“It’s still possible, but I’m miles behind. But I’ll keep fighting,” he added.

Button had started the season hoping to become the first driver to win back-to-back titles with different teams since the late Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio in 1957 as well as the first Briton to win two in a row.

It would now take an upset of epic proportions, and certainly on a par with Kimi Raikkonen’s 2007 against-all-odds fightback for Ferrari, for those dreams to come true.

Sunday, in a rain-delayed race at a hastily-completed and slippery circuit some 400km south-west of the capital Seoul, was a big disappointment.

“I had a pretty rubbish day. It’s laughable how bad my day was,” said Button.

“If I think about it too much I’ll be very unhappy.

“But I go to (the next race in) Brazil with a smile on my face and looking forward to the challenge, and that’s what we’re here for,” added Button.

The Briton savoured the finest and happiest hour of his racing career in Brazil last year when, in the penultimate race of the season, he won the title with Brawn GP, now Mercedes.

This year’s race is likely to be bittersweet, the return a year on likely to take away the crown he collected at Interlagos.

“You can’t do anything except laugh because that was the most hysterical race,” he said of Sunday’s chaotic 55 laps, with the first three under the safety car in the rain before proceedings were stopped and then started again 48 minutes later, again behind the safety car.

It ended in near-darkness.

“I didn’t have any grip and was just so slow, I was pretty much the slowest person on the circuit,” said Button.

“I was really struggling with locking front tyres...just every time I braked for a corner I went straight on. Pretty horrific today, really.”