British fans of Jenson Button are only too aware that the pressure is on the Englishman at the Brazilian Grand Prix this weekend as he tries to close out a Formula One title race that he has led from Day 1.

If the weight of expectation is building on Button — he needs a podium finish at Interlagos to make sure of the championship — imagine what Rubens Barrichello is feeling. The veteran Brazilian, who has always struggled to win over the hearts of his motor sport-mad countrymen, needs the performance of his life on Sunday if he is to maintain his challenge to Button.

Going into his 287th grand prix, the 37-year-old who grew up around the corner from Interlagos and used to joke that, as a boy, he ate tyres with engine oil for breakfast, is 14 points behind his Brawn GP team-mate. Barrichello ideally needs to be on the podium this weekend and well ahead of Button to keep alive one of the most unlikely championship campaigns in recent seasons.

Barrichello was never thought of by anyone, except possibly himself, as “king of the castle” material this season. He appeared, at the start of his seventeenth year in the sport, to be coasting to the end of a career that has been record-breaking only in terms of his longevity.

His early form, when he was consistently beaten by Button in racing and qualifying, underlined his status as a sort of Brazilian David Coulthard — a man whose youthful promise suggested glory in waiting but who hit Michael Schumacher’s career head-on and never recovered.

Those who knew “Rubinho” when he was a boy driving the wheels off go-karts with his foot flat on the floor have always believed he had the speed and the talent to make it. In fact, in São Paulo some still find it hard to believe that he has not scaled the dizzy heights of Formula One already. “He was so quick in karts, we were sure he would be champion,” said Antonio Rogatto, a São Paulo taxi driver who once raced Barrichello.

It has been no surprise to them to see their man turn the tables on Button during the second half of the campaign, when the Brazilian has shown all his experience at getting the most out of a car and his still-lightning reflexes on the track.

The statistics tell their own story: in the past eight races Barrichello has beaten Button seven times in qualifying, has won two races, while Button has not finished higher than second, and has outscored his team-mate by 36 points to 24.

On Sunday Barrichello should have the crowd behind him, even if some in his sprawling home city still mock him as Schumacher’s “tortoise”. Felipe Massa is indisposed — although he is scheduled to do the honours with the chequered flag — and Nelson Piquet Jr has left the sport in disgrace. So the hopes of a nation are on the Brawn GP driver’s shoulders. But Barrichello has an awful record at his home circuit, where he used to sneak in to watch races for free as a child. In 1994, he was fourth for Jordan but since then, and having started once on pole, he has had a miserable time that included seven retirements in a row between 1997 and 2003.

Barrichello’s weakness is his temperament — he can get fiery in and out of the cockpit — and he is also prone to error under pressure, especially at the start, where he has stalled his car three times in races this year.

Button is far too gentlemanly to admit it, but he will be hoping that the expectations of the crowd and the cauldron-like atmosphere of the circuit dedicated to the memory of the late Brazilian racing driver, Carlos Pace, will get to his team-mate and give him the chance to get away once and for all to Formula One’s sunlit uplands.