The 2008 world champion has never finished a season behind a McLaren team mate since he entered Formula One in 2007 but that proud boast is set to end in the glare of the Yas Marina floodlights on Sunday.
Jenson Button is 38 points clear of his fellow-Briton, with only 25 left to win after the penultimate race of the year in the Emirate, and is on course to finish as overall runner-up behind Red Bull’s double world champion Sebastian Vettel.
Beating one’s team mate is every driver’s immediate aim, since only he has exactly the same equipment and is therefore a true measure of performance, but it is not Button’s top priority.
«It would be nice to finish ahead of him in the championship but if I could get another win that would mean so much more to me this year,» the 2009 champion told Reuters after the last Indian Grand Prix.
Button has taken three wins to Hamilton’s two in a championship dominated by Vettel and Red Bull, despite the McLaren being close to their pace.
Vettel, 24, is the overwhelming favorite to chalk up a record-equaling 14th pole of the season on Saturday and then complete a clean sweep of three wins in the three Abu Dhabi Grands Prix held to date.
The German won the title here last year, and has already wrapped up his defense of that crown, and has nothing but good memories of the day-to-night race at the lavish anti-clockwise circuit.
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