Button’s £10m exit strategy
Briton given one year as McLaren’s ambassador, then chance to race again
JENSON BUTTON has been handed one of the most extraordinary ‘retirement’ packages in Formula One history — £10million and the chance of a return to racing.
The 2009 world champion was beaming as the longest running saga of paddock intrigue came to a strange, but for him perfect, conclusion in the Monza paddock ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.
Button will race on until Abu Dhabi, the final round of the season and the 305th of his career. He will not then be retiring as such, but will spend next year as an ambassador for McLaren on what is understood to be a £5m salary, with the option of a second year. He is expected to spend hours in the simulator and will probably test the car at some point in case he gets an SOS to jump into the race seat.
Then, in 2018, McLaren have an option to take him back as a full-time Formula One driver. Confused? It seems the unusually contorted contract suits everyone. First, Button gets the rest he says he needs, but he clearly did not want a clean break from the only life he has known since before he made his debut 16 years ago.
Second, it allows the highly rated Stoffel Vandoorne, the reigning GP2 champion from Belgium, to be given his chance. He might otherwise have moved elsewhere at 24.
Third, Button remains as cover next season and then, importantly, if Fernando Alonso retires when his contract expires next year. Button would be 38 if he returned in 2018, still a year younger than Nigel Mansell was when he won his world title in 1992.
The compromise deal was born, Button revealed, at the Belgian Grand Prix last week in Spa, where he went in to see McLaren chairman Ron Dennis in his paddock office.
In a 45-minute meeting, Button told Dennis that he had been thinking during the summer break. ‘I told him I need a rest,’ said Button. ‘I can’t go through this again. I need to experience living as an adult without F1 in my life.
‘I realised that during my holiday with really good friends and family and one of my sisters and her husband. I got to Spa knowing what I wanted.’
Dennis outlined his two-year plan and the details were agreed in Monza. Button made the announcement in McLaren’s motorhome having already told his mother and sisters. His friends Chris Buncombe and Richie Williams, his manager Richard Goddard and PR man James Williamson were there.
But he said he missed the presence — and guidance — of one man, his father John, who died suddenly in 2014. ‘He’d be very happy about this news,’ said Button. ‘He’d have said you clever little s***.’
What awaits next year for Button, McLaren responsibilities apart? Keen on fitness, he promised to step up his triathlon work and may take part in other branches of motorsport, including following his father into rallycross.
Television is sure to be courting him. Given that he will be in the paddock next year, he is likely to appear on either Sky or Channel 4, though he said he would not be ‘reading a script’.
He can afford to be picky. He is already Britain’s third richest sportsman, being worth more than £70m even before this new contract, which is understood to be worth in the region of £5m a year.
While Button was contemplating life beyond Formula One, his former team-mate Lewis Hamilton was annexing pole position for Mercedes by beating his team-mate Nico Rosberg into second by 0.478sec.
It was Hamilton’s fifth pole at Monza, putting him level with Juan Manuel Fangio and Ayrton Senna. Should he win tomorrow it will be the Briton’s 50th victory. And he is expected to do that: the last six winners at Monza have started on pole.
Rosberg was downbeat afterwards. His mouth spoke a few optimistic words, but his eyes betrayed him.
But then the focus fell on the man who qualified 15th: Button. How will he find it, someone wondered, having to sit it out next season.
A smiling Dennis, standing next to Button, answered for him: ‘Six months from now, he’s going to be bonkers.’
But happiness with his new American girlfriend Brittny Ward, freedom at last, and five million pounds, suggest he will have mighty compensations.