Brawn’s Jenson Button finally realises his potential

He's got all the talent but, well, you know how it is. He just can't convert his abilities into victories. He can't do it when it matters..."

This type of cod-psychology, argues Simon Barnes in the Times, is the sort of thing heard in saloon bars across the land, "now that we're all experts in the psychology of sport", and Jenson Button had previously been subjected to it, along with such fellow 'also-rans' as Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash.

"How Button must be loving this Formula One season," Barnes exults, the 29-year-old F1 driver having won three of four GPs this season. "Even if nothing more goes right for him, he has made his point. All those who said that he was a second-rater, all those who said that he didn't have what it takes, all those who said that he had everything except a certain quality of vertebra, have been shown to be completely, totally and 100 per cent wrong."

"The point to relish here," in the face of the armchair psychologists, "is that once he found himself in this better car, Button has grasped every opportunity that has come his way. Not jaded by his years as a backmarker, not demoralised by all that time back in the peloton, not weakened by all his time among the betas and the gammas of the dominance hierarchy. Button has seized his day with glorious elan."

There are shades of Sebastian Coe winning the 1,500m at the 1984 Los Angeles, Barnes concludes. "Who says I'm fucking finished?" Coe roared as he crossed the line. Button could well ask the same question himself. ·