Bel GP - Race weekend recap - Button

Much like team-mate Lewis Hamilton in Hungary, Jenson Button and McLaren dominated the Belgium Grand Prix race weekend.

It's seems bizarre for a team that can be the class of the field on a regular basis to not be able to hook both cars up to enable them to have solid race weekends, but that is what we had again for this Grand Prix, Button enjoying a well performing car and Hamilton struggling.

There was little to take from the running on Friday, during first practice both Button and Hamilton were five seconds off the pace and in second practice neither set a lap time due to the weather.

On Saturday though it was clear that Button was set for a good weekend.

Button was fifth quickest in FP3, half a second clear of Hamilton and he went on to take pole position later in the day, once again beating his team-mate by 0.821s.

“It’s been so long since my last pole position that it almost feels like a win for me! In fact, it’s my first pole since Monaco 2009 - which was a race that I won - and it demonstrates that I can qualify really well. So I want to offer my congratulations to the whole team: it’s my 50th grand prix for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes this weekend, so it’s a great time to get a pole position for everyone at Woking, at Brixworth and of course here at Spa. Button told formula1.com.

The race was a bit of a non-event for the spectators in regards to Jenson Button, who led away from the grid well, got into the first turn still in the lead, avoided the carnage behind him and simply drove off into the distance.

His lead was so great that even after he had made his one and only pit-stop of the race, he maintained the lead despite other drivers behind him being one-stop into a two-stop strategy.

“I’m sorry to all the fans if it wasn’t very exciting at the front! However, winning a grand prix is never easy: you’ve always got to look after the tyres and keep an eye on the gap behind. Today’s race was particularly tricky to read, in fact, because lots of cars were on different strategies so you never knew exactly where you stood.

Before the race there had been a lot of talk about what role Jenson Button would play in the final half of the season.

The 2009 Formula One World Champion had a huge deficit to leader Fernando Alonso and was also quite a considerable distance behind team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

Many had wondered if Button would support Hamilton's championship bid, hence the close scrutiny between the two drivers performances during practice and qualifying.

But with Hamilton taken out in the drama at turn one, all the talk was irrelevant and with Button now securing the 25 points for a race win, that distance between Hamilton and Button is now down to 16 points.

He added: 'We need to score big points in both world championships - and today was exactly what we required. I’m a massive team-player, and I fight for the team; I want us to win both world championships and, until I can’t mathematically fight for the drivers’ world championship, I won’t give up on it. I think I showed that today.”