Kobayashi to race again in Abu Dhabi

Kamui Kobayashi will again deputise for the injured Timo Glock in the final race of the Formula One season in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.

Jenson Button's Bugatti Veyron supercar up for sale - a snip at £899,995

A supercar owned by newly-crowned Formula One world champion Jenson Button has been put up for sale for almost £900,000.

Button takes the scenic route

Too often Jenson Button has lacked the instinct to pick the right team at the right time, but at last he's found his perfect matchSo there it is, the name of Jenson Button finally inscribed on the grand prix roll of honour at the end of a season in which a campaign that began with the rush of six wins in seven races appeared to have slowed to a crawl as it approached the chequered flag. There are many ways to win the world championship, and the 10th British driver to capture the title added to the suspense by taking the scenic route.Button may be still on the right side of 30, but he has had to wait longer to secure his title than all but one of his compatriots. The task that took Lewis Hamilton two seasons, Jim Clark and James Hunt four, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees and the two Hills, Graham and Damon, five and Mike Hawthorn seven to complete has occupied Button for an entire decade, longer than anyone except Nigel Mansell, the sweating, straining Sisyphus of formula one, who rolled his boulder up the hill for 13 fretful years before managing to get it to stay put on the summit.This coming January it will be 10 years since tears rolled down Button's boyish cheeks as he fell into the arms of his equally emotional father after being told by Sir Frank Williams that he was about to become Britain's youngest-ever grand prix driver. Less than a week earlier the lad from Frome had celebrated the end of his teenage years, and the future appeared to be one of unbroken promise.But it takes all sorts of experiences to make a world champion, and Button's path to the title has been strewn with obstacles. In retrospect his trials, although painful and sometimes humiliating, could be seen as a necessary counterbalance to the impression he can sometimes give of floating through life on a cloud of privilege and good fortune, with a yacht in the Monaco harbour, a yellow Ferrari and a string of girlfriends drawn from the ranks of pop singers, aristocrats and underwear models.But Button is not burdened with an overinflated ego, and a world championship is unlikely to change him now. According to his schoolteachers, he was careful to underplay his early success in karting -- "There was no boasting or bragging," one of them told me several years ago -- and he has remained an approachable and unpretentious figure, with much more to him (including a liking for competing in triathlons) than the celebrity nonsense."We always thought that Jenson was outstanding," Patrick Head, Sir Frank Williams' partner, said in Monaco this spring, when Button was in the middle of his early-season winning streak with the Brawn team. "He's always had great driving skill, and now he has experience, calmness, judgement and other things. He's also in the right place."Too often in the past he had found himself trapped in the wrong environment, creating a superficial and misleading impression that caused him to be written off by two of the sport's most powerful men. The now-disgraced Flavio Briatore sacked him from the Renault team in 2002 in order to promote his own protŽgŽ, Fernando Alonso, shortly before Bernie Ecclestone advised David Richards, the BAR-Honda boss, against reviving the Briton's career.Richards's decision to ignore Ecclestone's opinion set Button on the path that would lead, seven years later, to his coronation as the 31st world champion in formula one's 60-year history. Even then, however, it was hardly plain sailing as Button navigated his way unsteadily through a series of setbacks. A mini-scandal when his team was suspended for making illegal use of a hidden device in the car's petrol tank was followed by the messy aftermath of Richards's mysterious sacking by Honda, an expensively aborted attempt to return to the Williams fold and a succession of poor cars.Among the most valuable weapons in a world champion's armoury is the instinct for joining the right team at the right time, and until this year it seemed to be the attribute Button most crucially lacked. Williams let him go (in order to honour an pre-existing commitment to Juan Pablo Montoya) at the end of his first season, he was ejected from Renault just as the team was becoming competitive enough to win titles, and even when a period of improving fortunes with Honda climaxed in 2006 with his first grand prix victory, that success proved to be a mirage as the team went into a sudden and disastrous decline.His judgement was not always sound in his choice of personal managers and advisers, and it took him several years to settle on one he believed he could trust. Throughout it all, however, his resilience earned growing respect from the paddock cynics. He stayed on good terms with Williams and Head, he refused to trade insults with those who denigrated his ability, and he earned the loyalty of the Honda engineers and mechanics by never complaining or making excuses when, instead of the Stradivarius he needs, they kept giving him plastic ukeleles.Most of all, when Honda suddenly pulled the plug before the beginning of the present season, he refused to panic. Instead of fleeing into the arms of a rival team, he saw the sense in staying put, voluntarily cutting his £12m annual salary by about two-thirds and showing his confidence in Ross Brawn, his new team principal. That act of faith played a key part in restoring the morale of team personnel whose livelihoods had been threatened.On the track he has shown that while some champions are bullies and others are stylists, his smooth precision puts him firmly in the latter category. It is no accident that he grew up admiring the calmness and consistency of Alain Prost while the young Lewis Hamilton adored the panache and charisma of Ayrton Senna.And now he has proved himself beyond doubt, in and out of the car, to be anything but a flaky underperformer. In answer to those who claim that his run of six wins in this season's first seven races, which laid the firmest of foundations for his title challenge, was the achievement of the car rather than its driver, he can point to Mansell's eight of the first 10 with Williams in 1992 or Michael Schumacher's five of the first six with Ferrari in 2002. These things happen in formula one, and the champion is the one with the skill and intelligence to take advantage of his circumstances, as Jenson Button has done at last.Jenson ButtonFormula OneBrawnMotor sportRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Button keeps cool as team rivalry hits home straight

In the Brawn garage ahead of the Japanese grand prix, where Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello are 'at war', you could be forgiven for thinking this was the start of the season rather than the enactment of the endgame that will almost certainly see one of them crowned champion for the first and possibly last time.

Kobayashi subs for unwell Glock

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Reshuffle at McLaren to ensure driver equality

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