Button faces a year on the sidelines burning rubber

Jenson Button, cast adrift by Honda's shock withdrawal from Formula One, yet another victim of the credit crunch, is still a mass of wins waiting to happen.

That's the opinion of his closest friend David Coulthard who has now retired from racing to join the BBC F1 commentary team.

Scotsman Coulthard quit life on the edge after 13 wins from 246 Grand Prix starts to free himself from the shackles of the a racer committed to his single-mindedness.

And he reckons his former on-track foe Button, with just one win from 153 races, could challenge wonderboy-champ Lewis Hamilton as a regular front-runner if only he had a car to match his ability.

The Japanese slow coach of a car was embarrassingly snail-paced compared with its rivals and Button was left frustrated.

Halfway through their disastrous season, when they plunged to ninth out of 11 teams, they gave up any hope of 2008 glory and concentrated on building a car for the '09 challenge.

Word from inside team HQ was they were at last on track to put up a show fitting their global reputation.

Whether that was misplaced optimism or not we will never know. Rumours of a 30-strong queue of offers to take-over the Honda outfit are rife. But nothing is definite.

"If somebody buys the team, he will for sure be with them," says Coulthard, "but if nobody buys in then he will be in an extremely difficult position.

"There is a lock-out right now because all the big teams have signed their drivers and they are not going to kick somebody out to make way for Jenson.

"He may end up having to sit on the subs' bench this year and that would be a tragedy.

Button, 29, this week, said: "I have no choice, I have to hang on and hope that I'll be racing next season and not wasting my time waiting for a drive.That would be really frustrating.

"The tragedy is that we were looking good for next season with a package that could well have been up there challenging for wins."

-Ted McCauley is a motorsport expert based in England