“It's not so much a question of danger, but it will make it more difficult for us to work in practice. It could be we're starting a fast lap with low fuel and you come across a Lotus or a Virgin with full tanks running 12 seconds slower,” said Button in an interview published by Italy's La Stampa.
“Even in qualifying, with 24 cars on the track, it will be crucial to get it right. In the race it will be better, because the difference between first and last will be more like 3 or 4 seconds,” added the reigning world champion, hinting that traffic will not be such a difficult problem to handle in the late stages of the race.
Last week, during an interview with Ferrari's official site, Brazilian driver Felipe Massa also spoke against the 3 new teams in F1, saying that they will cause dangerous situations in 2010 in both qualifying and race.
“I hope they won't be a danger. There are 6-7 teams one second apart while those teams are 4 seconds behind. It's not good for the sport and not good for them: it's like two different series. They'll suffer. And we'll suffer too, when we have them in front of us during qualifying,” said Massa in the aforementioned interview.
Some couple of days later, he denied having criticized the new teams, but reiterated his belief that the immense gap of performance between the new teams and the already established ones will not be good “for the sport, for the people who watch, or for the teams themselves.”
During the latest 2 test sessions this winter, the cars of Lotus and Virgin were several seconds behind the other 2010 challengers, while HRT will debut in F1 without a single mile of testing for their car.
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