By Phil Huff
March 20 2003

Following Max Mosley's decision not to attend the Malaysian GP, the Thursday press conference, which he was due to attend, had to be re-arranged. BAR Honda's Jenson Button was one of the guests... Q: Jenson, things have been fairly fraught with Jacques over the last couple of months, and didn't seem to improve in Melbourne.
Jenson Button: Yeah, we get on fine. Yeah, lots of things obviously happened in Australia for whatever reason. That was Australia and it's finished now. We've just got to get on with this race and hope that the same things don't happen.

Q: Could you have stayed out for another lap and delayed your pit stop?
JB: No, no, I would have run out of fuel.

Q: So what has been done to prevent the problem that you had in Melbourne?
JB: Yeah, the radios are fixed now, they work now. Mine's fine. After the race a lot of work has gone into making sure the radios are working well. Hopefully they will be good here.

Q: Apart from Jacques, do you feel that you've settled in pretty well?
JB: Yeah, very good, very very happy. The most comfortable I think I've been in Formula One, and probably the team that I've been most happy with. Everyone seems very positive and we're all working together very very well.

Q: What really makes the difference?
JB: I think the biggest difference is when I came into the team; we got down to work very very quickly whereas other teams, they were a little bit unsure, with me being young and quite inexperienced. But here, we got on very quickly and we started working with the new car very very quickly and they also listened to what I had to say from the word go which is very important.

Q: So I'm sure you feel that the result was not representative...
JB: It was crap. No, but I think that's the same for a lot of teams. The weather conditions, the new regulations. I don't think everyone got it perfect on the day. The car's good. It's not good enough to win but it's still a very competitive car and I think we can show here how good it is.

Q: Does the sport have the balance right between technology and sport?
JB: Not at the moment, no. I think when Silverstone comes it will be a little bit closer. We just wait and see, really.

Q: Jenson you lost a lot of time in that pit stop thing. By the end of the race you were very close behind Jacques. Can you tell us how you felt your performance was relative to his throughout the race. Do you think you were quicker over the balance of the race?
JB: I think I did a good job in the race, yeah. The position we were in after making quite a big mistake with the tyres and not pitting as early as we could have done for slick tyres … Yeah, I think I did a reasonable job.

Q: Jenson, I have a follow-up to the question you were asked earlier. There seems to be quite a lot of camouflage going on around the place. But last weekend I understand that David Richards revealed that Jacques' so-called radio problem was that his earpiece had fallen out of his ear. I'm interested to know if that's what you've been told and, if so, how did it get back in for the rest of the race and do you believe him?
JB: I didn't actually know that so... I don't know if it's true if his earpiece fell out. It doesn't really matter now. As long as it doesn't happen again. You can't go back in time. So long as it doesn't happen. That's not really an issue, is it?