WITNESS - Burning up the Bird's Nest with Button

Nick Mulvenney has been Reuters sports correspondent in China since early 2006 and has been involved in covering Formula One motor racing for a decade. In the following story, he tells how he rode alongside Formula One champion Jenson Button in a heat of the annual Race of Champions in Beijing this week.

By Nick Mulvenney

BEIJING (Reuters) - Jenson Button's grin never appeared as maniacal as when he leaned over me to tell David Coulthard how easily he was going to beat him.

The Formula One world champion and I were in a KTMX-BOW racing car on the start line of a circuit laid in Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium for the first heat at the annual Race of Champions on Tuesday.

I was nervous. What had seemed a great idea when it was broached an hour earlier now seemed folly for a man whose sole attempt to join the ranks of racers had ended abruptly with a 49cc moped wedged under a parked car 25 years previously.

Button, though, was in his element. Given that the final race of a long Formula One season had concluded only two days before in Abu Dhabi, he could have been forgiven for resting on his laurels.

Sitting beside him in the low-slung KTM racing car, however, I was keenly aware that even if this was not a grand prix, Button wanted to win. Badly.

He is a world champion racing driver at the pinnacle of his career, I had reasoned earlier as I squeezed myself into a race suit several sizes too small; he is not going to take any chances.

Besides, I might have a chance to have a chat and maybe winkle out a story.