Last year, when both Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello were dominating the first part of the F1 season, the Italian official – then employed at the Enstone team – called the former a “paracarro”, an Italian word for a concrete roadside post. It was his way of suggesting that it was actually the Brawn GP car that dominated the field, not the driver.
This year, despite changing teams and becoming teammate of McLaren protege Lewis Hamilton, Button scored 2 wins out of 4 races and is leading the championship by 10 points heading to the Spanish GP. Asked about his former driver's performances one year later, Briatore doesn't seem to have changed his view on the 30-year old.
“I never said he (Button) was not good, but for me he is not among the five fastest drivers in the world,” said Briatore, according to some late reports in the Italian media.
Although his comments towards Button in recent years have surprised a lot of people, it sure didn't come as a shock to the fans that have some knowledge of the relationship between the two in the early 2000s. Back when a younger Button was driving for Benetton – and struggled quite a lot – at the end of the 2001 Monaco Grand Prix, Briatore spoke of his driver as being “so slow it seemed he was scouting for a new place to moor his yacht).”
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