Button link gives strength to Lynn

Alex Lynn says interest in Jenson Button from Williams bodes well for his own hopes of trying to earn a race seat with the team in 2017.

Both Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas are out of contract at Williams at the end of the season, with it looking likely at least one of them will not be driving for the team next year. Button is also in the final year of his contract at McLaren, and Williams has shown interest in the Briton but has warned it will not wait around for the 36-year-old’s future to be decided by his current team.

As a British driver, when asked if Button’s link to Williams is good news for him if the 2009 world champion does not join the team, Lynn told F1i: “I think so.

“The thing is for me I’ve been working with this team for two years now and they all know what I’m like. I know these guys personally very well, we’re mates, and they also know how hard I work and how much I want it. That for me is a really big thing.

“They know what I can do in the car, I’ve worked really hard in the sim and believe I have helped in a lot of ways, and I get on really well with the guys. So I’d like to think if it came to it they would say ‘yeah, we believe in Alex’.”

And Lynn says he feels there is additional pressure on him to perform being affiliated with an F1 team, but enjoys the challenge.

“Oh, massively. I think that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Delivering under pressure and feeling the pressure. I’m always a believer of the fact that you’ve got to be quite lucky to feel pressure because it means that people expect something of you, you expect something of yourself and people rely on you to produce something.

"That’s what it’s all about, that’s what I love about racing. Delivering under that pressure and this year turning things around when people are asking you questions like ‘what’s going wrong?’. You’ve got to soak it all in, change the result and keep moving forward.”

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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.