It’s been an interesting few months for Lewis Hamilton. Not only has he struggled to get the pace he has been hoping for in the new design McLaren, but he suddenly has serious competition from another Brit in the Paddock.

This time last year Hamilton fever was in full swing and the rising star could hardly put a foot wrong as far as the media and general public were concerned. At the same time non-F1 fans would have been forgiven for asking ‘Jenson who?’  Twelve months later and how the tables have turned. Jenson Button’s feel good story – from a driver who at one point looked unlikely to have an F1 drive this season to winner in Melbourne – has captured the hearts and minds of the public, and you can’t open a newspaper at the moment without seeing an article about Jenson.

Such interest and support for Button must surely be hard to swallow for Lewis who had previously held the position of the media’s F1 darling.  And to make matters worse, while Jenson’s column inches focus on his rise to success, his loyalty to the team through the recent difficult times and his aspirations for the future, Lewis’s recent mistake of misleading the race stewards in Melbourne is splashed all over the papers, and the reigning World Champion is having to call a press conference to publicly apologise for his actions following the Australian GP.

Watch the Lewis Hamilton press conference here.

Gripping stuff.  It seems the off-track dramas are just as interesting as the racing itself. I for one will be tuning in to the Malaysian GP this weekend to see how the next episode of the battle of the Brits unfolds….

By Amy Mansell on April 6th, 2009

Tags: Default, Formula 1, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton