F1: Button's security blanket remains at Brawn

Behind every powerful man is a strong woman; and behind every successful racing driver is a calm, effective race engineer. He is the glue that keeps team and driver together when the man in the car is having a bad, or even good, day.

For the past five years, the voice in Jenson Button's ear has been that of (now) 36 year old Andrew Shovlin, PhD, a graduate of Leeds University. In 1998, fter gaining his doctorate in Vehicle Dynamics and Control, he joined the BAR Honda R&D team. Two years later, he joined Olivier Panis' race engineer's team, and in 2003, when Jenson Button arrived, he was his Assistant Race Engineer, taking over as Race Engineer in 2004.

"Shove," as he is affectionately called, has been the quiet voice that TV viewers have come to recognise as the second man in the cockpit during the incredible season that Button & Brawn have had. It was Shove that Button first ran to hug when the Championship was won. Even in a team that works as well as Brawn did in 2009, there is a special bond between a driver and his engineer.

Break it and it all goes wrong: in recent years, the collapse in form of drivers whose engineers have been pulled off the pit wall is legion. And where engineers are given new drivers to play with, the form just doesn't come: ask Ferrari - Massa didn't get on with his previous engineer, Gabriele Delli Colli. Given Rob Smedley in mid 2006, Massa's performance was transformed. Smedley's hero-worship embarrasses Massa out of the car, but inside, the two work as one. But after Massa's accident in 2009, Smedley ran Badoer and Fischella both of whom achieved spectacular lack of success despite Smedley's input.

One wonders how much of the delay in Button making a decision was due to the question of what to do about a race engineer.

For yesterday, Brawn GP made it clear: when push came to shove, Shove is staying with Brawn/Mercedes.

The team went on an outing to Manchester Velodrome were both Shovlin and Peter Bonnington (who had been engineer to Rubens Barrichello) both raced cycles around the track. Brawn has done wind-tunnel testing for the British Cycle Racing Team but the message from this weekend's event was not just about the bikes.

It was a clear statement of intent: these guys are ours.

That leaves Button to step into the lions den at McLaren without his primary protector.

In every sense of the word, he will be new and isolated.

His prospects of success will depend on how quickly he can build a relationship to at least compare with the one that he spent five five years developing, through highs, lows and despair, at BAR, Honda and Brawn.

Given that there is almost no pre-season testing, Button will be stepping into an unfamiliar car with an unknown type of support when the new seasons starts. There is no doubt : the support will be wholehearted. But for the man who said he wanted a new challenge, to step out of his comfort zone, to race Hamilton on Hamilton's terms, starting alone except for friends, family and physical therapist, he's sure making it difficult for himself.