SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) - Jenson Button said he will give his all for BAR-Honda next season despite admitting he is disappointed to be staying with the team beyond the end of the year.
Briton Button signed a secret deal in August to join Williams in 2005 but his move was blocked on Wednesday after the sport's Contracts Recognition Board said he still has a binding contract with BAR until the end of next year.
And as he prepared for Sunday's season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix he said: "I'm not going to lie - it is a bit disappointing but you can't have everything in life.
"If you look at the last few weeks with a difficult situation in the team we have still been able to have some good results and if we all stay focused for next season I think we can have a very good year."
Button's comments seem to defy rumours that he may have been planning to take a sabbatical in 2005 and move to Williams, with whom he made his Grand Prix debut four years ago, for 2006.
Button, who had a lean spell with Benetton and Renault in 2001 and 2002 before joining BAR last year, made a career breakthrough by securing his first ever podium in Malaysia in March this year.
He went on to claim nine more top-three finishes, with four second places in San Marino, Germany, Monaco and China, but is yet to win a race.
He knows that next season will be more crucial than ever.
"It's been an interesting season, good or bad, and I think we can build on this," he said. "We need to have a good relationship within the team and we need to move forward because next year is a very important year in my career."
Button, who has remained relatively silent over his planned move since it arose in August, said the only reason he considered leaving BAR was because he did not think his contract was valid for 2005.
He said earlier this year that the team's failure to pay him performance bonuses in 2003 had disappointed him but insisted that was not the only reason he decided to move.
He admitted the last few months have been "draining" him away from the racetrack and have damaged his relationship with the team but BAR chief
David Richards believes it will be good for them all in the long run.
"Probably we have come out stronger as a result of this situation," said Richards. "We'll certainly be a lot more open and frank with each other than we ever have been before.
"There is no getting away from the fact that the situation has a little bit of repairing to do. We have seen the issues, we have aired a lot of them in public, the pair of us.
"But I think the real measure is how the team performed since this all cropped up. We are second in the constructors' championship and Jenson is third in the drivers'. I don't think we could have improved much on that."
Button still appears keen to move on at the end of next year and Williams have already admitted they will track his career closely with a view to teaming up again in the future.
But Richards is determined to prove that BAR are the team for Button to stay with in the long term and added: "We are not going to debate well into the future, we are going to worry about next year first of all.
"We've got to convince Jenson quite clearly, we all go through periods in our life where we are not certain we have picked the right horse. Jenson had a few bad races in the summer but we all have worries.
"It's quite reasonable and quite realistic. The trick now is to make sure we solidify as a team, work together and prove that there is no foundation for those issues.
"Clearly we are a young team, before this year you wouldn't have dreamt what we could have delivered this year. The record of other teams out there is much more established than us, it's a fact.
"So it's not unreasonable for a young driver to look at that and think 'are we going to be able to deliver in the long term?' I say we can. There must be question marks over that but we are committed to making sure it happens."

10-21-2004, 18h16