How McLaren could have kept Vettel in sight

As Jenson Button left the McLaren motorhome last Saturday evening after a short celebratory get-together to mark his 200th grand prix start, someone pointed his glance up to the skies.

There, arching high above the Hungaroring and stretching far away in to the Budapest countryside, was a vivid rainbow: which said everything about the mixed weather conditions that had greeted Formula 1 over the weekend.

But it wasn't because of its beauty that Button smiled when he saw it. It was the potential of its hidden meaning that had got Button all excited.

For as he turned to the other members of 'Team Button', as the entourage of his father, girlfriend, manager and trainer have become known, he said: "Hey guys, do you remember the last time we left the track on a Saturday night and saw a rainbow? And do you know what happened the next day..."

He was referring, of course, to Canada - where another weekend dogged by poor weather and tremendously difficult mixed conditions in a race had resulted in a brilliant Button victory. Was this rainbow a good omen, a sign of history repeating itself? Button certainly hoped so on the eve of another great win.

Yet while Button will point to the good luck message from above as a charm that helped him on his way to victory on Sunday, what is equally clear is that fate is going to pretty much decide whether what appears to be an on-track swing in the competitive order between Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren does actually help the championship fight go all the way until the end.

For while it could be argued that there is only a slim chance of Sebastian Vettel suffering a spate of misfortune that will cost him the points to get the likes of Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Button up there, we should actually switch it the other way and look at the role circumstance has played in delivering the German such a big lead in the first place.

Webber was too far back in early races to take points off Vettel © LAT

Beyond having a car that was the class of the field for much of the opening half of the campaign, Vettel has been able to open up his current advantage through a combination of a team-mate that was not up to speed at the start of 2011 and the fact that other teams were inconsistent in their challenges.

With Webber struggling to unleash the full potential of the Pirelli rubber for much of the early stages of the year, the way was clear for Vettel to pretty much pick up all of Red Bull's points - rather than be forced to share them out and hinder his ability to break clear from the pack.

In fact, if you look at the maximum number of points that could have been scored by a Red Bull driver this year - based on what was really achieved by the men in the RB7 cockpit at each race - Vettel could only have improved himself by three points on account of finishing behind Webber in Germany. That's an impressive 98.7 per cent hit rate.

Alonso too has got pretty high up, having amassed 92.3 per cent of what was possible from Ferrari. His collision with Hamilton in Malaysia, finishing behind Massa in China and his retirement in Canada are the only days when he did not achieve the full potential of the car. If those days had not happened then, based on what his team-mate did that day, he could be sitting on 157 points - still a whopping 77 points behind Vettel.

What is most interesting though is how McLaren's title ambitions have been hurt by Button and Hamilton sharing the wins, the points and the retirements. With two wins apiece under their belt, and each with DNFs on days their team-mate won, they have managed to split McLaren's haul evenly.

Compared to Vettel and Alonso dominating at their teams, Hamilton's 146 points is 71.2 per cent of the maximum achievable by a McLaren driver this year, while Button's 134 is just 65.4 per cent.

Had all the misfortune, errors and unreliability been heaped on just one driver, then the other (who would have been riding the kind of charmed spell that Vettel has enjoyed) could be sitting on 205 points right now - with four winss under their belt. Now, being just 29 points adrift of Vettel, that would really have given us a championship fight to get excited about.

Of course, this points analysis counts for nothing - and all that ultimately matters is what is achieved by the real drivers in the real races on the real days. But these stats do point us towards some trends.

First of all, just how much Vettel has had everything go his way this year. His team-mate has taken almost no points off him; it's Webber who has had the majority of the bad luck with reliability and has invariably come off worse when it has boiled down to pitstop errors or wrong strategy calls.

Had problems only affected Button, then Hamilton may be closer to Vettel © suttons

That is to take nothing away from Vettel's brilliance in the car, though, for he is doing a sensational job and thoroughly deserves all the success he is getting. Yet, you cannot argue that there hasn't been some element of the 'luck of a champion' in 2011: the Monaco pitstop where being put on to the wrong tyres helped win him the race; the fact that the botched stop at Silverstone came on a day when he would have been beaten anyway; the spin at the Nurburgring being made when he wasn't at risk of throwing away a win...

For McLaren, you could argue that its form has been hurt by the fact that its luck has been too evenly shared about - and that it would have been better off if it had been the same driver who had made all the driving errors and suffered all the mechanical problems.

All these elements show how fine the line is between delivering the form needed to dominate a championship and become engulfed in a titanic battle. And if that fine line turns - and Vettel suddenly starts not having things go his way and points start getting split with his team-mate, then with either of the McLaren drivers suddenly having things click into place, we could yet have a battle that goes all the way.

Then it won't only be Button who is looking to the skies on race weekends.