Jenson Button snubs Michael Schumacher – They were the worst of friends and the worst of team mates, something which can be said of most F1 drivers. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button spent three years together at McLaren before the former announced his shock move to the Mercedes team for 2013.

Hamilton had won a world title in 2008 with McLaren and Button win 2009 with Brawn GP, which ironically became Mercedes where Hamilton was to enjoy huge success. Button is the only F1 team mate who has outscored Hamilton during their time together.

Lewis prevented this from happening between himself and George Russell by outscoring the man from King’s Lynn in the final race of 2024 in Abu Dhabi. Button extended his career with the team from Woking racing full time between 2010-2016 and in having announced his retirement team boss Ron Dennis made Button an ambassador for McLaren.

 

 

 

Button deputises for Alonso

His final race in F1 was the following year, as Fernando Alonso headed off to the Indy500, Button stepped in to race the Grand Prix of Monaco. His much anticipated return ended as a damp squib, as he retired late in the race after a collision with Sauber driver Pascal Wehrlein.

Now Button is an expert commentator for Sky F1 and attends around one third of the Grand Prix weekends each year. Unlike Nico Rosberg who also was Hamilton’s team mate, Button says it as it is and is a little less politically correct, whilst Nico at times feels as though he’s blowing smoke up Hamilton’s ass.

There are only four drivers in F1 history who have competed in more Grand Prix than the British driver, these are Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Rubens Barichello and Lewis Hamilton himself. The range of drivers who Jenson competed with across his career which began in 2000is impressive. He will remember Michael Schumacher on there top step of the podium before the adoring tifosi in Monza, through to the current generation which includes Lando Norris who replaced Button as the McLaren reserve driver in 2018.

Button sits 19th in the all time list of F1 race winners, though his fifteen victories and fifty podiums are probably shy of representing his real talent. He joined the McLaren team at the end of an era and the beginning of another which saw Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel dominate.

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Hamilton quick, but Alonso tougher

Jensons’s final win of his F1 career came in Brazil in 2012 and it was nigh on ten long years before McLaren were to win again, with Daniel Ricciardo being victorious in Monza 2021. In his book “Life to the Limit” the Brit recalls some of the most difficult opponents he faced on the grid and with Schumacher and Hamilton reaching their peak during Button’s career, it is somewhat surprising he doesn’t pick one of the record seven times world champions.

Fernando Alonso is Jenson’s choice of the toughest rival as the pair were both team mates and rivals during various points of tiger careers. He was recalling the time where his F1 days were coming to an end and he along with Alonso were at the struggling McLaren team.

“I’d still feel as though I’d won the race if I beat Fernando, which meant I always had something to race for,” Button reveals. “And he was a great competitor. In fact, I would say over the years Fernando had been one of if not the toughest competitors I’d faced, both as a teammate and a rival at other teams.

“Lewis was unbelievably quick and could pull a lap out of the bag like that. Him and Ayrton Senna were the quickest guys over one lap maybe ever, but Fernando was the most well-rounded driver,” Button concluded.

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Hamilton feels McLaren is “his team”

Jenson continues that even were he to out qualify Alonso, he knew the Spaniard would still be tough to beat in the race. “He’s nice on the outside, really affable and approachable, but beneath that, he’s a very tough competitor who will do anything to beat you.

“In all, a good teammate to have a bloody tough to beat. I enjoyed the two years we spent together.”

Hamilton has had a love/hate relationship with most of his team mates and George Russell has been no exception. Apart from the Valtteri Bottas years when the Finn was specifically recruited not to challenge the British driver, unlike the outgoing Nico Rosberg.

Lewis was ‘adopted’ by McLaren boss Ron Dennis when he was just thirteen. The team were to provide his with winning machinery in his karting days and then winning cars as he entered GP3 and GP2. With the departure of Fernando Alonso after a fractious year together in Woking during 2007, Lewis won his first F1 title the following year alongside the passive Heiki Kovalainen from Finland.

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Lewis peeved by Jenson’s arrival

By the time Button arrived in 2010, Lewis had the feeling the McLaren team was his and as Jenson reveals in his book, Hamilton appeared a little peeved with Button arriving as world champion. Jenson was a far more formidable team mate for Hamilton than his predecessor. “Did he like being beaten by his teammate? Probably not,” Button muses.

“But he’s a competitor and I’m sure like me he relishes the challenge, it’s why we do what we do. Personally, he was fine with me, no issues at all at this stage of the game.

“But you could just tell that he was a little bit peeved. That thing about it being his team, it was right on the money. And if you ask me, he was finding it difficult to get a handle on the fact it was our team now,” said Jenson.

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The tantrum in Spa

Button did at times get under Hamilton’s skin in a very obvious manner, in particular at the 2012 Belgium Grand Prix where Jenson claimed pole position. Hamilton who was well off the pace, unusually down in eighth place and some 8/10ths of a second slower than his team mate.

So furious was Lewis in the twilight of his McLaren career, he posted his and Jensons’ telemetry read out for all to see on social media. Engineers and personnel alike from around there paddock were shocked by this show of petulance, with one unquoted source stating, “this is war.”

So it is understandable why Button has chosen Fernando Alonso as his toughest competitor. The pair never appeared to fall out in public and in underperforming McLaren/Honda’s, they had a common gripe for some while.

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MORE F1 NEWS  –  Ferrari’s Hamilton deadline

Lewis Hamilton debuted for his new Ferrari Formula One team this week on a damp cold morning in Fiorano. Despite hysterical reports in the Italian media suggesting local police had been asked to monitor almost a state of emergency with the expected masses that would descend to see the first black driver in the red of Ferrari, around just a 1000 fans turned up for the historic moment.

Earlier in the week Hamilton had visited Maranello where again the expected throng was more subdued than expected, there he had signed autographs for the tifosi, met with his new engineering team along with a sit down with Ferrari group CEO Benedetto Vigna and team principal Fred Vasseur.

Whilst there were reports Hamilton’s lap times on Wednesday were sub-par when compared to those when Fernando Alonso or Sebastian Vettel first sat in a Ferrari Formula One car, the impossible nature of making such a comparison deserves little more than this sentence now affords the topic…READ MORE ON THIS STORY