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Button
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Sir Stirling Moss has described Jenson Button as “much more dedicated” to his craft than Lewis Hamilton and believes the elder driver will beat his McLaren teammate once again this season.
The 16-time Grand Prix winner, now 82 and speaking at the Motorsports Hall of Fame awards ceremony predicted that Button would once again profit from Hamilton’s perceived lack of concentration, having become the first of Hamilton’s McLaren teammates to earn more points in a season than him last year.
“Lewis does funny things, so one can’t be sure,” he said. “But I would put my money on Jenson. Yes I would. Lewis is terrific, he really is exceptionally quick, but Jenson thinks about certain things better than Lewis will.
“Like when it’s raining and whether or not to go in for a change of tyres... Jenson is better.”
Hamilton, 27, out-qualified Button 13 times to six in 2011, but Moss said raw speed was not the issue, rather Hamilton’s propensity to let outside distractions affect his performance.
“He goes off and sort of screws it up sometimes, doesn’t he? That’s the problem. Jenson is much more dedicated.
“I don’t mean in any way other than it means more to him what he’s actually doing, the actual driving and so on.
“The one thing you need in racing is concentration. So I worked hard on keeping my concentration for three hours because they were three hours races then.
“That’s a hell of a long time, particularly when there are pretty girls you can wave at and blow kisses to!”
Moss added that Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel was the closest thing he has seen to Juan Manuel Fangio, the dominant Argentine who won five world championships during his era.
“Vettel is outstanding,” said Moss, who praised McLaren’s drivers and added: “They are up there, but not as far as he is. Vettel is a modern Fangio in Formula One.
“I can’t see, other than his natural ability, how he is that good, how he can be that good.”
“I would say having the best car is always an advantage, but when you give the best car to the best driver, for the others it must be terribly frustrating.”
Asked whether Fangio still rated as his best of all time, Moss replied: “In Formula One, yeah. Mind you having said that, Vettel is that good now.”
Meanwhile, Vitaly Petrov has replaced Jarno Trulli at Caterham with immediate effect.Petrov was released by Renault at the end of last year after two seasons with the Enstone-based marque that is now known as Lotus. “This is an exciting day for me,” Petrov said.
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