An undeserving World Champion? Button it!

I for one am delighted that Jenson Button has won the Formula One World Drivers Championship. It’s taken him a decade to get there, but he finally did it.

Since the days of Mansell and Hill, Button has been the only British racing driver I’ve really been able to get behind, mainly because he’s the kind of racing driver I’d want to be.

He didn’t waste an opportunity to win plenty of races and titles in the best car on the grid, then whine about it, like David Coulthard in the McLaren did. And he’s not the corporate message-spouting, bland PR robot that Lewis Hamilton is.

I think it’s because Button was living the dream. At 19-years-old, I was playing Formula 1 computer games. At the same age, Button was driving an actual Formula 1 car and making a pretty good job of it. Yes, he came in for criticism for having a playboy lifestyle, with the fast cars, faster women and the luxury pad in Monte Carlo. But isn’t that the whole point of being a racing driver? That’s why Top Gear Magazine presented him with a CAMRRAD ‘Sex: Breakfast of Champions’ badge for his racing overalls. These drivers put their lives on the line every other weekend in far flung locations all over the world over the summer months. Why shouldn’t they let off some steam and enjoy themselves on their days off?

Flavio Briatore was the first to accuse Button of concentrating too much on pop singers and not enough on winning races. But I think that was mainly down to jealousy as, let’s be honest, Briatore is hardly an Adonis and is always sniffing around the latest leggy supermodel, not to mention the fact that the car he delivered for Button to race in was hardly the most competitive in the world.

The other criticism of Button’s career was that it took him too long to win a race. Yes, Jackie Stewart won three world titles within 100 races, but that was a different era. But look at Mika Hakkinen. He went 99 races before he finally won his first race. That’s only 13 fewer races than Button.

Then people point to the fact that Hamilton nearly won the title in his first season and eventually won it 12 months later, apparently proving he has unmatched raw talent. But he was in the best car and had been groomed to drive it since he was a child! And he never had to compete against Michael Schumacher.

The 2009 season was the first time Button had the best car on the grid (and let’s not forget the problems his Brawn GP had in getting the car on to the track in the first place). And what did he do with it? He won six of the first seven races. A poor driver can’t win races by just having a good car (as the two understudies for Filipe Massa have proved), in the same way a great driver can’t win in a dog of a car. Unless they’re Schumacher.

Now we’ve got people complaining that Button didn’t win another race this season after the Turkish Grand Prix in June, so therefore he isn’t a deserving champion. But the stats will show he has won six races this season (which is more than Hamilton won in 2008) and wrapped the title up with one race to spare (as opposed to Hamilton who won it on the last corner of the last lap of the last race).

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone made no secret of the fact that he wanted the Championship to go down to the final race at the new UAE track. Yet if he’d succeeded in his original plans of having this year’s title decided on the number of race wins, the contest would have been over before the mid-way point of the season.

The rules are the same for everyone: amass more points than anyone else over the course of 18 races in a calendar year. The drivers won’t get more points for winning in Abu Dhabi than they do for winning in Melbourne, and the fact Button kept his points total ticking over when everybody else’s cars got quicker and he himself suffered a loss of form should be a testament to his ability, not a criticism.

Prince's Trust Wild UK Challenge: Day 3, The End (06/09/09)

And so to Exmouth.

It’s a charming little seaside town. Perhaps too many pensioners who can’t drive for my liking (yes, I’m talking to you Prius owner who backed into a car while trying to get into an impossible space, then just drove off), but otherwise very nice. They’ve even thrown a bit of money at it to try the whole ‘regenerate the docks with bars and flats’ thing.

But I didn’t really get a chance to appreciate any of this as we sped towards the conclusion of our mammoth trek.

Trying to impress the Marines had really knocked the stuffing out of me and, just like the day before, I was now coasting rather than riding the bike. Not to mention that my buttocks were hurting and I was having to sit on the saddle one cheek at a time in order to try to find any kind of comfort.

But there was still one more problem we (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘I’) had to overcome: another puncture. I’d just offered a very, very old woman £20 to swap her motorised cart for my bike when I got the unmistakable feeling of my back tyre going down again. The wheel started slipping and it was becoming increasingly difficult to peddle. This was it, I was being thwarted just one mile from the end!

As I pushed the bike along the seafront, I was crestfallen. I’d got all this way and I wasn’t going to be able to ride that last stretch over the finish line. But then I heard a voice from behind me. “You alright mate?” It was one of my fellow competitors. “Yeah, just got another chuffing puncture. I just need to pump it up to get me across the line.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a pump and proceeded to inflate my tyre.

One of his teammates road past shouting, “Leave that f***er! We’ve got to get going.” Ignoring his friend, he carried on inflating. “That should get you there mate. I’ve gotta go.” I manfully shook his hand. “That’s fine. Seriously, thank you.” And off he rode to the final challenge.

Coming in the opposite direction was Tim, who had come back to look for me. He saw I was in some trouble with the bike, so we swapped and soon we too were on our way to the final challenge: the sea swim.

Now right at the very beginning of this process, Gemma and I had decided there was no way in the world that we were going to to do the sea swim. Mainly because sharks live in the sea, but also because it’s cold and swimming 50 metres out to a buoy after a day on a bike would be too much to contemplate. But Tim was having none of it and soon after arriving at the beach he was stripped off and running towards the water. I on the other hand, was red-faced, breathing heavy and ready for it all to be over. Then I saw it. The inflatable arch with the word ‘FINISH’ written on it. It was just over the road, we were just a couple of hundred yards away from the end. As soon as Tim was back up to the top of the beach, we were back on our bikes for the final time.

As I crossed the line and raced towards the line, I had a thought, “I’m going to pop a wheelie!!” It seemed like the greatest idea anyone in the world had ever had. Then another thought popped in my mind, “If I pop a wheelie, I AM going to fall off and make a complete tit of myself”. So I opted to just go no-handed and wave at the cheering crowds, like a Tour de France winner. It was the sensible option.

"Better to travel in hope than to arrive," Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote. He was wrong. Crossing that finish line was probably one of the greatest feelings I have ever known. No matter how tough the previous couple of days had been, no matter how much I’d hurt or wanted to stop, they all evaporated the minute we went through the arch. It was joyous. And incredibly emotional. It was all I could do not to cry. Seriously, I’ve never felt anything like it in my life.

And that, essentially, was it. The sun was out, there was a cricket match on, and I had a seemingly endless supply of cider to drink. I could have stayed in Exmouth all day. But of course, we had to go home. First back to Minehead to collect Tim’s Land Rover, then up the M5, past the Malverns where we did our training hike, and home.

So all the hard physical work is now done. Now we’ve just got to carry on raising money. Anyone who’d like to donate can do so at the Just Giving website HERE.

Thank you.