Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button hopes Alonso 'annihilates' him in Austin

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Jenson Button hopes Fernando Alonso "annihilates" him in the United States Grand Prix due to a Honda power unit upgrade.

Alonso took a grid penalty at the Russian Grand Prix as a result of testing a new specification of power unit, thought he didn't race it in Sochi. Alonso will race the upgraded engine in Austin while Button is still on the older specification, and as a result Button admits he is hoping his McLaren team-mate proves much quicker this weekend.

"Fernando had the same spec as me in Sochi, but on Friday he put in the phase 4 and then took it back out, so it’s being used here and he has the upgraded engine here," Button said. "Normally when you are team-mates you want exactly the same, but I’m hoping it is a good upgrade, he’s really quick and he annihilates me all weekend.

"It’s unusual to say that; when you are fighting for a world championship at the front everything has to be the same and I’ve always pushed for that, but in our situation it doesn’t matter. It’s about getting it on the car, proving it out reliability wise and I’ll have the same engine in the next race."

And Button says he won't follow Alonso's lead of taking the penalty for the power unit a race early in order to give himself the best possible chance of scoring points at Circuit of the Americas.

"No, I’ll wait [to take the penalty]. This is a good chance for us to get some points and much better than Sochi. Now I’ve said that, we probably won’t score points, but in Sochi we scored points because we were reliable and we did nothing wrong. Here we should be more competitive and be able to fight for points."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.