Jenson Button Back on track and ready to have fun in Monaco
Jenson Button says his one-off return to F1 with Mclaren at the ‘home’ circuit he loves is perfect
Whether it is his bronzed, burnished glow, or the fact he is sporting an elaborate salmon-coloured watch only a long-time Monégasque would wear, Jenson Button looks as if he has never been away. Six months have passed since he bade poignant farewell to Formula One in Abu Dhabi, where his mother, Simone, shed a tear in the Mclaren garage, and now he is back for more. “I’m not here to say goodbye,” he says, with his usual roguish grin. “I’m here to have fun.”
A peculiar set of circumstances has helped restore him to the fold. Button (right) had grown weary of certain facets of F1 life – the remorseless travelling, coupled with his obligation, as a relatively tall driver, to eat like a sparrow to satisfy the sport’s strict weight limits – but one last spin around Monaco was an offer he could not refuse. When Fernando Alonso announced he would miss tomorrow’s glittering showpiece in favour of a tilt at the Indianapolis 500, Mclaren lined up, in Button, a ready-made swap: like for like, champion for champion. Granted, Button might not be quite in the class of Alonso, a driver who more than any of this era pushes the parameters of what is possible in an F1 car. The Spaniard prevailed in one of the finest qualifying duels seen in Monte Carlo, against Kimi Raikkonen in 2005, and just last month he propelled a Mclaren thought fit only for the breaker’s yard to seventh on the grid in Barcelona. Button, for all his qualities, has seldom shown the same pyrotechnics. Even in 2009, his triumphant season with Brawn, he did not achieve a victory beyond June, prompting one inquisitor to ask: “Jenson, do you actually want to win this title?” He is, though, a fiercely dedicated professional who cares deeply about how he performs this weekend, even as a one-off. “If I didn’t drive an F1 car again I would be happy, but jumping back in for the Monaco Grand Prix is perfect for me,” says Button, 37. “A whole season just drains you, after so many years, but this represents a fresh challenge, driving a car that is very different and around the Monaco circuit I love. I’ve lived here for 17 years, so it’s very special to me. I’m excited to see what I can do.”
Until this week, Button had not even set foot in the latest F1 muscle-cars, whose increased downforce and lightning cornering speeds put extreme pressure on drivers’ necks. He passed up the opportunity to join Mclaren testing in Bahrain last month, convinced it would teach him nothing about brushing the barriers at 190mph on Monaco’s famously cramped streets. Instead, he has thrown himself into the team simulator, even if he did roll the car on one of his virtual practice runs.
Button’s advantage is that, even in a retirement spent looking after his dog Storm, a cross between a Siberian Husky and a Pomeranian, he has kept himself prodigiously fit. His obsession these days is triathlon and his training, split between the jagged hills and sparkling waters of the Côte d’azur, has proved so effective that he has qualified for the World Ironman Championship in Tennessee this September.
Modestly, for somebody who has run the London Marathon in under three hours, he says: “I will always be an amateur, never a professional, in a sport like that. For me it is all about pushing myself. It is my aim to win the world championship as an age-grouper.”
Beyond the F1 bubble, Button’s world has undergone dramatic upheaval over the past 3½ years. First, he lost his father John, who had sparked his love affair with motorsport and who was a fixture in the Mclaren motorhome at most races. The sudden death hit him, he reflected, “like a stake through the heart”. In 2015, he and his then fiancée, Jessica Michibata, were subjected to a robbery at their villa in St Tropez, where police suspected the attackers had released an anaesthetic gas through the air-conditioning vents while they were asleep.
The couple split later that year, and Button has since started a relationship with Brittny Ward, a US model 12 years his junior. He luxuriates in a transatlantic lifestyle to match, claiming that recent traumas have convinced him to relish every moment. Having been deeply affected by the death five days ago of Nicky Hayden, the former Motogp champion, in a cycling crash in Italy, Button explains: “It’s sad that someone who achieved so much in a dangerous sport can have an accident on his push-bike, but this is life. It reminds me of the situation with Michael Schumacher. Michael’s still with us, but he is obviously not the same man he was when we knew him. You have to enjoy life as much as you can – that’s why I’m back here in Monaco this weekend. Whatever result I get, I think I will probably forget it by Monday and go and do something else.”
Button is adamant that he cannot be enticed by a longer-term return. Seventeen years, featuring 305 grands prix, 15 victories and that one cherished title, constitute a body of work with which he is quite content. Where Schumacher, even as a seven-time champion, could not resist one final chapter at Mercedes, Button has the comfort of recognising that he has drawn every last drop from his talents.
He can come across, with his ebullient demeanour and easy charm, as a man impervious to self-doubt, but Button argues that the sensation is very different as soon as he eases into the car. Wary of portraying this run-out in Monaco as a frivolity, he says: “I’m
nervous, of course. I think I would be wrong not to be. If I didn’t have butterflies, I shouldn’t be getting in the car, because that would mean I didn’t care. And I do care – I want to do the best job I can.”
Button is expecting tomorrow’s race, his 18th dash through the principality’s almost impossibly narrow street layout, to be brutal on the nerves. “It’s madness,” he concedes, smiling. “You have to make decisions at twice the speed as any other circuit. With the cars being so much wider, too, it is going to be a shock for everyone.”
‘It’s madness. You have to make decisions at twice the speed as any other circuit’