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MOTOR SPORT CHINESE FORMULA ONE GRAND PRIX PREVIEW:ON A DAY when he again topped the timesheets, Formula One championship leader Jenson Button has become embroiled in a slanging match with Renault boss Flavio Briatore in the wake of the FIA’s midweek ruling that the controversial diffusers of Button’s Brawn GP car are legal.

Ahead of tomorrow’s Chinese Grand Prix, Button lapped the Shanghai circuit in a table-topping one minute 36.679, almost half a second clear of the nearest non-double diffuser equipped car, the Red Bull Racing of Mark Webber. That lap time, though, followed a stinging attack from Renault boss Briatore who, in an interview with Italian daily Gazzetta dello Sport, had called the British driver “a paracarro”, a term meaning a roadside bollard.