FORMULA 1 WORLD CHAMPION Jenson Button has escape injury after his police chauffeur sped away from the scene of an armed attack on their vehicle.

Button was in the car along with his father, his manager and his trainer after leaving yesterday’s practice session for today’s Brazilian Grand Prix.

None of the passengers was injured in the incident.

Speaking to Autosport today, the McLaren driver said the car had stopped at traffic lights when his manager, Richard Goddard, noticed that a one of a group of men standing nearby was holding a baton. Button said he then spotted that one of them had a gun, and when his driver looked over, they began running towards their vehicle:

We angled the car and floored it. It didn’t look like there was a big enough space there, but we got between six cars – and rammed every single one to get past. We got through in the end and got away, but looking behind there were two guys with hand guns.

One was quite a simple looking hand gun and one guy with something that looked like a machine gun.

Goddard told the BBC that he thought more than four or five guys had emerged from a block of flats and approached the car. Button said the car they were travelling in was a bulletproof B-Class Merc with blackened-out windows.

He said that mechanics from the Sauber team had been held up and robbed over the weekend. Reuters reports that the three engineers were robbed shortly after Button’s incident, and none were injured.

Button stars 11th on the grid in today’s race, the penultimate race of the 2010 season, with Williams driver Nico Hulkenberg in poll position. Championship contenders Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber for Red Bull are sitting in third and fourth respectively.

A win for Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, who starts in fifth, would put him in a strong position to take the championship as he is already 11 points ahead of second-placed Webber.