[ AWAY from the race track... ]

AWAY from the race track, one of the highlights of the Grand Prix calendar has always been the "silly season", when informed opinion about drivers moving to new teams mingles with wild rumour and idle gossip. Sadly, this year's silly season has been decidedly unsilly.

There was little feverish speculation this summer about moves among the top teams. Ferrari have stuck with Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello; McLaren have kept faith with Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, whose 78th appearance together in Hungary broke the record for the most starts as team mates. But if continuity is a good thing for the teams, it is not entirely popular with the rest of the F1 world, which enjoys any distraction from the unrelenting intensity of on-track activity.

As supply greatly outstrips demand - there are only 14 truly desirable seats - the silly season usually pivots around one leading driver, with the whole market waiting for him to make his move before the rest of the pieces fall frantically into place.

This year Jacques Villeneuve held up the market as he pondered whether to leave mentor and best friend Craig Pollock's BAR team for Benetton Renault. After weeks of soul searching he stayed put. The F1 fraternity could barely keep its excitement under control.

Far more interesting has been the dilemma of Sir Frank Williams, who found himself with three extremely talented drivers under contract for next season, but only two cars to put them in. At the beginning of last year Sir Frank sent Juan Pablo Montoya, the 24- year-old Colo-mbian who was Williams' test driver in 1998, to race in the American single-seater CART series.

Montoya made monkeys of the whole field, winning the championship and the Indy 500 at his first attempt. He is now in a mood to conquer the world and is contractually obliged to do it in a Williams-BMW. Ralf Schumacher did enough last season for Sir Frank to extend his contract, so he's guaranteed a seat for 2001.

So Jenson Button loses out, which seems terribly unfair. At the start of this year, the team hired Button straight from Formula 3. It was quite a gamble. The last time it worked was when Lotus hired Hakkinen back in 1991 and few have tried it since.

Button has been a revelation. He outqualified Schumacher twice in his first four outings and has scored eight points, all from memorable fighting drives. After a few weeks learning who is who and how the race weekend works, he has looked every inch a Grand Prix driver. I've never seen the pressure get to him, indeed I've seen him rise to it on more than one occasion.

Button is that rarest of animals, an English sportsman with masses of talent and a big-match mentality. In any other year with any other team he would have done enough to keep his seat for the following year, but he was in the right place at the wrong time. Montoya is coming back because Williams thinks he will win races sooner than Button, while the 20-year-old from Somerset announced on Wednesday that he is off to Benetton Renault for two years on loan from Williams.

It is a tough break for Button. Benetton are a good outfit with great technical facilities and, in Mike Gasgoygne they have one of the sport's most exciting young designers. But Renault are restructuring the team as well as developing a radical new engine for next year, said to rev to 20,000 rpm (about 2000 rpm more than any of the current crop) - you don't make that kind of step without some teething troubles.

Meanwhile, the new BMW engine which Button has been using this year is getting better and better and it is clear that Williams will soon be the first team to attain the performance levels of Ferrari and McLaren. The top two should be a top three next year.

Now you are probably having trouble reconciling Sir Frank's decision to drop Button with his comments that he will one day be "a truly great racing driver," who has "astonished the team with his immediate grasp of F1."

I can see your point, but Sir Frank means what he says. If Button is to be a winner, he should come out of the two years at Benetton as a better driver. Williams' plan is to bring him back in two years time to replace whoever is the slower of Montoya or Schumacher.

Of the remaining pieces on this curious chess board, Jaguar is the best seat still available, but there is a shortage of exciting candidates to fill it. Jean Alesi has promised to stay loyal to Alain Prost as long as he is in charge of his team, so Jaguar may go with test driver Luciano Burti, who filled in adequately in Germany when Eddie Irvine was injured.

Sauber may lose Mika Salo - he's been offered huge bucks to test the new Toyota car and then be lead race driver when it enters F1 in 2002 - and is unlikely to re-employ Pedro Diniz.

One firm piece of news: BAR have hired Frenchman Olivier Panis on a two-year deal to replace Ricardo Zonta, who may move to Sauber or replace Panis as McLaren test driver.

- James Allen is a member of ITV's grand prix commentary team

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