Tributes flow in for champion Button

AUTOSPORT gathered them below.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown: "I want to send my warmest congratulations to Jenson Button for clinching the Formula One drivers' championship today in Brazil, on the same circuit that Lewis Hamilton won the drivers' championship last year. We can be proud that Jenson is the 10th British driver to win the title. His performances over the season with the new Brawn team have excited Formula One fans in Britain and across the world, and we look forward to his continuing success in the seasons ahead."

Niki Lauda: "He did a perfect job in all this driving forwards and backwards to be a real good world champion. There's nothing more to say about it. Nobody asks in the end how you come to be a world champion - I did it by half a point once, but it doesn't matter. Just to be a world champion is the difficult part and he's done it."

Damon Hill: "Jenson's done a fantastic job. He was out of a job over Christmas, and really he didn't know that this season was going to happen. He's been there through all the pain and I'm really delighted for him."

Sir Jackie Stewart: "Brawn have done an amazing job and Ross a master. But it takes a driver to get the job done at the end of the day, and Jenson did it. Well done to him."

Bernie Ecclestone: "Well, he's not world champion until the end of November when the FIA announce it. He's got enough points, if everything else is alright, to be world champion and he deserves it too. He did a good job. All the question marks from the last few races, in my opinion, now have disappeared."

Colin Hilton, MSA chief executive: "Jenson has done a fantastic job and we are all delighted for him. For those of us who have followed his career as he came through the ranks of UK motor sport, it was always clear that he had the makings of a future world champion. The team have obviously given him the right equipment this year and he has delivered spectacularly. For the UK to enjoy back-to-back F1 world championships is a wonderful boost for the sport."

Nick Fry: "Jenson hasn't surprise me at all. I've always felt that he could do it, and I think he's just demonstrated to everyone what he can do, and the doubters who said he couldn't overtake or he wasn't aggressive enough, hopefully they're eating humble pie because he really has shown them under a tremendously pressured situation and the competition today and through the latter part of the season especially has been phenomenally strong."

Rubens Barrichello: "I'm pleased for Jenson as a friend and as a great champion, and if I didn't win, he should have won it, so well done to him. Jenson won it, and he deserved to do it, but he won it on the first six races. The second half of the season was mine. It was a true fight."

Mark Webber: "JB's always been incredibly consistent, but the problem was that at the beginning of the season, he was also blisteringly quick. They were running really well and he was really on top of the car, and a bunch of other drivers had a shopping list of excuses why they weren't getting results. At the end of the day, they weren't and JB was, and that's what made the difference. He's a deserving champion."

Norbert Haug: "Congratulations to Jenson Button and the Brawn. Ten months ago these guys were in danger of having no future in Formula 1. Today, they all achieved the biggest reward possible for all their hard work and effort. Well done guys - you wrote a fairytale story this season. Jenson is a worthy successor to Lewis Hamilton as F1 world champion."