Jenson Button's incredible first year in F1

It might seem impudent to run a feature in the pages of Motor Sport on Jenson Button, a 20 year-old Formula 1 new boy yet to score a podium place. But this is different. This is a story about a phenomenon. His precociousness upset the Establishment; his natural way both with a car and with people made them eat their words. If you’re looking for the next Schumacher or Moss, or Mansell or, perhaps closest of all in terms of what he does behind the wheel, Prost — he’s arrived. Repackaged bright and brash for the new century, but set to be part of that lineage.

He was pushed into the lion’s den of F1 from behind a curtain at Barcelona, blinking as the flashlights popped. ‘Fleet Street’ rubbed its collective hands. A teenie driving for Williams the very team with which ‘Our Nige’ and ‘Demon Damon‘ had carved out their careers what a fantastic story. In the nick of time, too. With Hill’s retirement, and Mansell long since tucked away on his Woodbury golf complex, their job security as F1 reporters had wobbled but was now it was safe.

This open-armed welcome given him by the popular press, however, jarred within the sophisticated, conservative world that is F1. Soon it was more than just flashguns popping at him as the sport’s good and great lined up to have their critical say. Jackie Stewart: “He’s just a puppy. He’ll mess on the carpet. He should have gone to finishing school first.” Add to that Scheckter, Brundle, Hakkinen and Salo, to name a few, who came up with more of the same.

‘He’s just a puppy. He’ll mess the carpet. He should go to school first’ – Jackie Stewart

Worse was to come as Button the good-looking boy next door, hip, cool and out to enjoy life was embraced as the first motor racing darling of Laddism. TFI Friday, Loaded: these are icon titles for the ‘party on’ 18-30 generation and Jenson was their New Big Thing. And loving every minute of it.

His management — Eastender Dave Robertson and former F3 wild man Harald Huysman — capitalised big time and Jenson Button merchandising was soon outselling all but Ferrari and Michael Schumacher. Sure, Damon had not been slow to capitalise on his racing success, but this was different, given that Button was a huge commercial moneyspinner before he’d earned his spurs. It was perceived as being disrespectful to the hallowed ground of F1. Even within Williams, it seemed. Early in the season, Patrick Head commented that Jensonmania baffled him. “It’s like the motor racing equivalent of the Spice Girls,” he said, “and there’s no track record to back it up.”

Not yet. But even Patrick, definitely more conservative about drivers than Frank Williams, had been taken aback by Button’s pace and consistency at the showdown that earned him the nod over test driver Bruno Junqueira as Alex Zanardi‘s replacement.

“I’d pretty much decided we should have Junqueira,” says Head, “because we were already familiar with him, and the engineers had a high regard for his technical understanding. But then Jenson did a test for us at Jerez that suddenly made the decision very difficult. We then went to Barcelona and Jenson used a left-foot braking set-up for the first time it wasn’t something he’d done in a car before. And, instantly, on a track he’d never seen before, he was very quick.” Suddenly, from auditioning a solid stand-in while waiting for the contractual availability of their big white hope, Colombia’s Juan Pablo Montoya, it dawned on Williams that they might just have stumbled on the new Prost as they waited for the new Senna. For Frank, someone whose enthusiasm for great drivers is easily aroused, there wasn’t much of a decision to be made. With a bit of encouragement from BMW’s Gerhard Berger, he overruled the consensus within the team and took a flyer on Button. “I was excited by him,” he says, simply.

That didn’t change Button’s stand-in status — Williams was still determined to take up its option on Montoya, and Ralf Schumacher is in contract for a further two years, but it ensured that, contractually, Button is a Williams man long-term. He will race with Benetton-Renault for the next two years, but will still be paid by Williams and is expected to return thereafter.

The comparisons with Prost would keep recurring. It was apt, in fact, that his first experience of an F1 car had been at the wheel of a Prost, some weeks before the Williams test. It was his sensational form in that, and a ringing endorsement from Alain himself, which attracted the Williams interest.

“Compared to Ralf [Schumacher],” says Head, “Jenson turns in earlier and brakes earlier. His entry speed is sometimes down on Ralf’s but his mid-corner speed is often quicker because his style seems to enable him to get on the power earlier.” Watch Button through a fast corner and his car seems to turn in more lazily than his team-mate’s, its body language far less darty. The power comes on early and beautifully progressively and there is often a bit of exit oversteer, but not in an unsubtle powerslide; more like the whole car is floating, dancing and, as the power comes in, the back dances a bit further.

On the slow stuff the technical corners, Button seems to have a patience lacking in his team-mate. The mechanical grip of the current generation of narrow-track, groove-tyred F1 car is not great and where Ralf seems to get frustrated, Jenson doesn’t. It’s about feel.

Which brings us to one of the most remarkable facets of Button’s first F1 season: the lack of accidents. Prior to the first round in Melbourne, the brothers Schumacher were telling Jenson how he had to be particularly careful on a street circuit as a locked wheel could mean tagging a wall rather than missing an apex. He replied, only partly tongue-in-cheek: “But I don’t have accidents.” Michael was amused, Ralf was enraged. It’s a fine line between supreme belief and arrogance, just as it is between a great lap and an off. But he treads both immaculately.

‘The greats don’t need to be told. They just do it. Jenson is like this.

“The great ones,” says Berger, “don’t need to be told guys like Michael Schumacher. They don’t need to look left or right, they just do it. Jenson is like this.” In fairness, Button did tag the wall in Melbourne practice and ripped a corner off his car, but that was the only such incident all year. The others — tangling with Trulli at Spa and Indy, getting caught out in the concertina as Schumacher M braked unexpectedly at Monza — were just racing incidents.