As he approaches the beginning of the defence of his hard-fought drivers’ world championship crown in Bahrain in a week’s time, Jenson Button has reflected that there are several cars potentially capable of pulling a super-quick lap time out of the bag come qualifying in F1 2010 – but he argues that only a handful will be able to repeat that feat on race day and maintain a flat-out pace of development all the way throughout the campaign.

Pre-season testing in the top flight is famously hard to accurately read, and in 2010 that difficulty has become even more pronounced, with the ban on refuelling necessitating fuel tanks twice the size of before – and therefore by extension, producing even greater discrepancies in lap time between those running on full tanks and those undertaking low-fuel qualifying-style runs. The trick is in working out who has been doing precisely what.

Whilst firm answers will only be forthcoming in Sakhir, conventional wisdom goes that Ferrari, Red Bull Racing, Button’s McLaren-Mercedes team and the British star’s erstwhile employer Mercedes Grand Prix – formerly Brawn GP – will steal an early advantage.

Team-mate and title-winning predecessor Lewis Hamilton has warned that Sauber and Force India could similarly sneak in on the act  off the back of some surprising testing exploits, but Button suggests that whilst the pretenders to F1’s ‘big four’ might be able to do some damage over a single lap, when it comes to tyre-management over a long race distance, they will fade away again into the background.

Either way, the 30-year-old is confident that McLaren – which endured a catastrophic start to 2009, with a car that began proceedings the best part of three seconds shy of the leading pace and took half a season to adequately play catch-up – is in the ballpark and ready to do battle.

“I’m hoping the chances are good,” he told reporters during a special Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes phone-in session, when asked how optimistic he is about being able to make it back-to-back title glories this year. “In testing the car has been running very reliably, which is always important heading into a long season. The last day I drove at the test [in Barcelona] we had a new aero package on the car, which worked well; I didn’t really get a lot of time with it because it was wet in the morning, but I did a race run and some lower-fuel runs in the afternoon and everything was working very well.

“I’m happy with the way the car feels, but I still feel there is room for improvement. At Jerez, I think Lewis and myself both found [the long-run performance drop-off from the tyres] reasonably difficult, and I think it was because it was so cold and that made it difficult to get the tyres working. In Barcelona, on my run on the Saturday it was still quite difficult, because it had rained that morning and spread marbles all over the circuit; the car was quite loose at the rear, but I overtook Rubens [Barrichello] twice, I overtook Nico [Rosberg], I overtook [Vitaly] Petrov, I overtook a lot of people on my long run, so the pace was obviously good.

“Compared to the Ferrari, if you look at the race distance we did we came out on top, but you don’t exactly know what they’re doing. The pace seems good, and Lewis the following day was quick and the consistency seemed to be good when the circuit was in better nick. They tried a few of the ideas that we’d had the previous day, and he seemed reasonably happy with the car.

“Keeping the tyres in good condition is important; it seems that a lot of cars can be quick over one lap, looking at how close the times have been, but getting the tyres to work over a race distance is obviously more difficult. To see the times coming down throughout the stint on Lewis’ run was very positive, because if you’ve got a car that’s working the tyres too hard, they’re going to level out or might even go off.

Red Bull Racing’s Mark Webber came through to take the victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday, while Jenson Button did enough to secure the 2009 F1 drivers’ title by finishing in fifth.

Webber eventually finished 7.6 seconds up on Robert Kubica’s BMW Sauber with Lewis Hamilton taking the final spot on the podium for McLaren.

Sebastian Vettel was fourth after storming back up the field, with Button a fighting fifth, something that gives him enough points to sow things up with one race still to go in two weeks time.

Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top six, with Sebastien Buemi seventh and Rubens Barrichello eighth after a puncture late on dropped him down from P4.

For the record, Brawn GP’s 5-8 finish was also enough for Ross Brawn’s team to take the honours in the constructors’ championship.

Sebastian Vettel stole Jenson Button’s thunder on the British star’s home turf to consummately triumph in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone this weekend, leading home a crushing one-two ahead of team-mate Mark Webber to prove that Red Bull Racing can win in the dry too – and demonstrating that it is very much game on.

A textbook getaway from pole-sitter Vettel when the lights went out was almost bettered by that of Rubens Barrichello alongside, but the German kept his nose in front into Copse, with Webber slotting into third and Kazuki Nakajima moving up a place into fourth. The best start was made by Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari, as the 2007 F1 World Champion exploited his KERS power boost to maximum effect to storm down the outside – brushing the grass along the way – and vault up into fifth.

The Finn was aided along the way by a tardy getaway by Jarno Trulli on the second row that dropped the Italian back to seventh and also compromised home hero Jenson Button, who found himself tucked up behind the Italian and with nowhere to go, falling back from sixth to ninth in the process, behind Nico Rosberg in sixth, Trulli and the second fast-starting Ferrari of Felipe Massa.

Trulli was desperate to find a way back past Rosberg on the first lap but found his efforts swiftly rebuffed, and after Button profited from a mistake by Massa to move back up into eighth, he again found himself frustratingly stuck behind the Toyota. Further back, there was a superbly opportunistic move by an inspired Giancarlo Fisichella into Stowe, as the experienced Italian took advantage of Nick Heidfeld and Fernando Alonso squabbling ahead of him to dive down the inside of both and into eleventh.

That left the tardy Heidfeld – nursing a damaged front wing and defying the advice of his team in not pitting for a replacement – doggedly staving off the earnest and energetic advances of Alonso, the sister BMW of a slow-starting Robert Kubica and defending F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton in an entertaining scrap, with the latter having had his own grassy moment on the entry to Stowe after getting held up by Alonso and complaining of no grip inside his McLaren-Mercedes.

The real focus of the race, however, was up front, where Vettel was busy eking out an advantage of a second a lap, helped by Barrichello’s difficulties in warming his tyres up to temperature sufficiently quickly. Fastest lap after fastest lap carried Vettel almost 15 seconds clear just 13 laps into the action, with Webber able to make little impression on the Brawn GP right ahead of him and seeing his chances of victory evaporating into thin air.

Nakajima unsurprisingly became the first man to pit on lap 15, releasing the duelling Raikkonen and Rosberg into fourth and fifth respectively, with Trulli, Button, Massa and Glock similarly in attendance at the foot of the top ten. Raikkonen was the next to blink, promoting Rosberg to fourth, and the extra lap completed enabled him to leapfrog Nakajima in the process.

There was tension as Trulli and Button pitted together next time around, but unfortunately for British fans the status quo was maintained, and even worse, whilst Trulli was able to jump Raikkonen, the understeer-plagued Button was not – as the luckless Nakajima slipped behind all three of them following his excellent opening stint.

Barrichello was the next in, followed only a lap later by pursuer Webber, but whilst the latter’s stop was longer, the Australian narrowly emerged ahead – though there was a heart-stopping moment as the Red Bull emerged from the pit-lane and the Brawn GP stormed up behind him on the exit of Copse, with Webber just doing enough to stave ‘Rubinho’ off on his cold tyres. Interestingly, too, the two teams went in different directions on tyre strategy.