Jenson Button continued his seemingly inexorable journey towards the Formula 1 world championship at the weekend, winning in Turkey. But the question is: how much longer can we stomach his success?

We’ve had Bernie Ecclestone – and others – saying that it’s boring already, but I quite disagree.

I’ve thought about this a bit, and come to the conclusion that the length of time we can tolerate success is proportional to the preceding period of failure. Because we like the underdog, don’t we?

So Lewis Hamilton’s immediate success in Formula 1 was entirely unacceptable, because he had not earned it by first enduring a period of failure.

Jenson Button, on the other hand, hadn’t really been at the front of the grid in his nine previous years of Formula 1. So I’ll gladly see him dominate the entire season, and take the world title by a country mile.

Next season, of course, is a different matter. There’s no need for Button to go back to 2008 levels of awfulness, but a more modest campaign will be required to maintain support.

It’s unlikely that Brawn GP will be anything like as strong next year anyway, since their car won’t have been developed by Honda for about a year before the start of the season.

Conversely, if Hamilton takes his tough times with good grace – as he seems determined to after Turkey – then public support could well come to him for 2010.