Button has new angle on stirring up fan interest
JENSON BUTTON has an idea for projecting Formula One as a high-octane pursuit, and it does not involve building walls around the circuits. Responding to yesterday’s controversial suggestion by Bernie Ecclestone that 40cm-high barriers at each corner would deliver extra risk and excitement, Button said all that is needed are improved camera angles.
The TV footage of races is undertaken by Ecclestone’s Formula One Management company (FOM) and often lingers on yards of Rolex and Heineken sponsorship hoardings at the expense of close-up exposure of the driver and car.
Button, who is due to start his 303rd race here in Mexico on Sunday, said: ‘It’s the camera angles. They should be there for the speed, not just advertising.
‘If you have a camera all the way down the straight, it doesn’t look very fast — even if you are doing 200mph.’
The cars here will be doing far in excess of 200mph on the long main straight. In Mexico’s thin air, they may even record the fastest-ever times in Formula One, with Button predicting speeds of 240mph.
‘That is stupidly fast,’ he said. ‘Just mental. Hopefully, with the new owners (Liberty Media, who are in the process of taking over the sport) we will see more understanding of what the fans really want rather than a long shot for ten seconds.
‘With a camera in the kerb at the apex, you could see cars coming through in wheel-to-wheel racing. That would be awesome.’
Specifically on Ecclestone’s theory about walls providing a thrill in a sanitised sport whose watchword has been ‘safety’ for several decades, Button, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, said: ‘I understand there are possibly too many asphalt run-off areas and, as drivers, we like to be kept within the limits of the circuit because we sit in so many drivers’ briefings and discuss how far off the circuit we can go.
‘Can we put four wheels over the white line? So, for us, it’s a lot easier if we know what we can do. But safety is there for a reason.
‘As drivers, we like it if we get penalised for going off. But you could put gravel traps and then maybe asphalt later on to slow the cars down. The problem is that most of these circuits are used by MotoGP. It cannot just be decided as we want for Formula One.
‘We have races with walls, like those around cities such as Singapore and Monaco. But you’d have no overtaking if you did that everywhere. You have to have a balance between being penalised for making a mistake and not have any overtaking.
‘If you had three teams fighting for the win, you wouldn’t even think of asphalt being a problem.’
Button’s view was backed up by the championship leader, Nico Rosberg, who said: ‘We do not need to turn back time on safety to make the sport even better.’