Matt Bishop: What Jenson Button really brings to Aston Martin

Last week, Aston Martin announced the appointment of Jenson Button as its new team ambassador. That little sentence, so neat and simple on page or screen, has been ricocheting around my mind over the past few days, accompanied by all sorts of echoes and overtones, because it neatly bookends a relationship that stretches back more than a quarter of a century, to a time when neither Button nor Aston Martin, nor indeed I, could have imagined where the sport would take us, nor how circuitous the route would be. Triumphs, disappointments, tragedies, reinventions, rescues, and rebirths: they are all wrapped up in the story of Jenson Alexander Lyons Button, and, in a small but not completely insignificant way, as an occasional bit-part player, in my own.

Jenson arrived on the F1 scene in Melbourne in March 2000. He was 20 years old, wide-eyed but not awestruck, polite but not deferential, and already he carried himself with the composure of someone who knew that he belonged exactly where he was. Williams had given him his F1 chance, and the British press pack, including me, descended on him and his father John with the usual combination of optimism, curiosity, and scepticism that greets any young driver from our shores who dares to dream big.

It did not take long for the scepticism to ebb away. You could see how quick he was on the timing screens — obviously — but more tellingly his speed was visible trackside, in the way in which his car seemed almost to relax with him. Jenson’s inputs were uncannily smooth: the steering never looked hurried; the throttle was squeezed rather than stabbed; and the brakes were caressed before they were leaned on. He drove with a delicacy the results of which were anything but muted, for his technique generated prodigious pace, especially on the fastest circuits, and it marked him out as a driver of rare feel.

That season, 2000, was formative for all of us. We got to know Jenson and John well, and, as the year unfolded, it gradually began to acquire a flavour of shared adventure. John was fiercely proud, occasionally defensive, and always steadfast. Jenson absorbed everything. He listened more than he spoke, but when he did speak it was with a degree of clarity beyond his years. His on-track results were good rather than spectacular, initially, but that barely mattered, for our collective sense was that we were witnessing the dawn of a career that in time might become seriously impressive.

Then came 2001, and Benetton, and suddenly the narrative shifted. Giancarlo Fisichella, already a seasoned F1 ace, now in his fourth consecutive year with the Enstone team, had quietly become adroit to the point of insouciance in the way that he could quickly and nonchalantly set up a tricky F1 car then drive it at scintillating speed; and Button failed to match him. It was a bruising year therefore, for it disrupted the younger man’s expectations of a linear upward career trajectory, and it forced him to confront F1’s less forgiving realities head-on. A few pundits even began to write him off, which I thought silly. After all, innate talent cannot be extinguished by just one difficult season, and in Jenson’s case the raw material was clearly very good. What he needed was time, stability, and moral support, and John gave him the latter by the bucketload.

Jenson survived 2001 — and 2002, in a team renamed Renault, alongside Jarno Trulli rather than Fisichella, was much better for him. His progress thereafter was steady and unmistakable. After Renault came three seasons at BAR, then two at Honda – which, just as Benetton had been rechristened Renault, was the BAR team rebranded. He continued to improve. He became not only quicker but also more complete. He scored podium finishes and even a win. He learned how to detect — and articulate — the dynamic niceties of what his engineers needed to know about a car. He developed the ability to shoulder expectation, and he began to play a leadership role within the complex organism that is an F1 team. By the time I joined McLaren in 2008, as communications and PR director, thereby swapping the press room for the other side of the media fence, Jenson was already one of the most accomplished drivers on the F1 grid, even if the statistics had yet to catch up with the substance.

My own 2008 was a year of evolution and immersion. At McLaren I worked closely with Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen, two very different characters, one bolder and ballsier than the other, both of them grappling with the peculiar pressures that come with driving for a team that expects excellence as a baseline. Lewis, incandescently brilliant, was mustard-keen to trump a 2007 F1 title bid that had fallen agonisingly short and had been mired in political and regulatory controversy: I am referring to ‘spy-gate’. Alongside him, Heikki — friendly, diligent, and quick, especially in qualifying — was doing a solid job, albeit not quite solid enough to earn himself a long-term McLaren future. Meanwhile, a long way down the grid, driving for a team now not only rebranded but also refinanced by Honda, and having endured a torrid 2007, Jenson was trying to put a brave face on yet another painful season. His Honda RA108 was uncompetitive, and the team’s morale was low, yet through it all I could see that he remained engaged, positive, and loyal.

Then came 2009, one of those F1 seasons that reminds us why our sport can still occasionally feel like a fairytale. Honda withdrew, Ross Brawn and Nick Fry stepped up, a management buyout was quickly organised, and a team that had almost died found itself, improbably and romantically, at the front of the grid. Jenson was sublime in the first few grands prix of 2009, converting opportunity into domination with a calm authority that spoke volumes about how far he had come. He outperformed his team-mate, the experienced Rubens Barrichello, and by the end of the year he was F1 world champion, a title earned not merely with speed but also with intelligence and determination.

McLaren’s 2009, by contrast, was a year of recovery. We started it badly, very badly, grappling with a car that did not do what we wanted it to do, and we salvaged respectability only through relentless design and engineering development and the in-cockpit virtuosity of Hamilton, who dragged two wins out of circumstances that scarcely deserved them. By season’s end it was clear that Kovalainen would not be retained, and that we were therefore in the market for a replacement.

“Almost idly, I suggested that he might like to explore the possibility of Jenson joining McLaren”

Here is where fate, friendship, and the curious choreography of F1 intersected in a hotel foyer in Abu Dhabi. Then, as now, I was chummy with Button’s manager, Richard Goddard, and we fell into conversation over beers after the final race of the 2009 season. Almost idly, I suggested that he might like to explore the possibility of Jenson joining McLaren. Richard looked at me quizzically and said, “But you guys are taking Kimi Räikkönen, aren’t you?” I replied that Dave and Steve Robertson, Räikkönen’s father-and-son management team, were asking for too much money. Goddard jotted a few lines in a notebook, then put it away, and smiled. Our conversation moved on, as such informal confabs do, but the seed had been sown.

A couple of days later, when I bumped into Martin Whitmarsh, our team principal, in the canteen at the McLaren Technology Centre, I told him about my conversation with Goddard. At that point Whitmarsh was inclined towards hiring Nick Heidfeld, who had been doing a workmanlike job at BMW-Sauber over the past four seasons. Heidfeld was quick-ish, experienced, and reliable: a sensible choice, albeit not an adventurous one. I continued to push for Button.

However, Martin told me he doubted that Jenson might be genuinely available. After all, the tiny Brawn squad was about to become part of a works Mercedes powerhouse, and why would a newly crowned world champion leave a team that had just taken him to the pinnacle? When I explained that Button really might be keen to explore a move, and that Goddard would almost certainly confirm as much, Whitmarsh picked up the phone. I remember supplying Richard’s mobile number. The rest happened quickly and quietly. A deal was done, surreptitiously, with a discretion that was necessary given the political sensitivities involved.

As McLaren’s communications and PR director, it then fell to me to announce Button’s arrival. It was not a straightforward press release, either to write or to deliver. McLaren had effectively snatched the reigning F1 world champion from under the corporate nose of the Brawn/Mercedes organisation, at a time when Mercedes was not only about to rebrand that team but was also McLaren’s engine partner. Courtesy suggested we give our friends in Stuttgart plenty of notice. Strategy favoured allowing them as little as possible. Ron Dennis, our chairman, always as directive as he was intrepid, decreed that we would select the latter course.

The fallout was swift and, in its own way, spectacular. On that tense morning in November 2009, Nick Fry, the CEO of the soon-to-be-Mercedes F1 team, was driving up the M40 motorway to Brackley when he heard the Button-to-McLaren news on the radio. He was livid. He called Ron: no reply. He called Martin: no reply. He then called me, and I answered. What followed was a volley of abuse that would have made a docker blush, delivered at Autobahn speed. I took it on the chin. It was part of the job. Nick and I have laughed about it many times since, most recently over a pleasant and boozy lunch in London just last week, which tells you something about how F1, for all its tension and turbulence, has a benign side and a remarkable capacity for reconciliation.

When Button arrived at the McLaren Technology Centre in January, to begin work on our 2010 campaign, he sought me out and thanked me personally for my role in facilitating his transfer. It was a small moment, but a lovely one, and it moved me. Gratitude is not a given in F1, but Jenson has always understood its value. He was and is one of the good guys.

His seven seasons with McLaren amount to a case study in perspicacity, resilience, adaptability, and cleverly disguised savvy. Partnered with Lewis, who already had a robust claim to the title of ‘best driver in the world’, Jenson would be required to face an intra-team challenge considerably tougher than he had ever had to tackle before, yet he met it with dignity and resolve. There were highs and lows, as there always are, but there were also moments of genuine magnificence. His win in Canada in 2011, in conditions that ranged from biblical to farcical, was a masterpiece of patience, courage, and wisdom. His victory in Belgium in 2012, which was executed with unflappable precision, was another. They were the works of a driver who was operating at the height of his powers, using his head and his heart every bit as much as his hands and his feet.

After McLaren and Mercedes had divorced at the end of 2014, Jenson’s role evolved — and, if anything, his influence grew more significant. In 2015, as McLaren reunited with Honda, our new engine partner, our cars were woefully uncompetitive and dreadfully unreliable, and the resulting frustration was palpable, bitter even, all around. It would have been easy, even understandable, for a driver of Jenson’s stature to vent his spleen, to distance himself, and to protect his reputation by vocalising his discontent. His team-mate, Fernando Alonso, did exactly that. But Button did none of those things. Instead, he was tactful and sophisticated in his dealings with Honda, a company with which he had raced and won in F1 before, offering behind-closed-doors criticism when it was warranted, albeit always in a way that was constructive and respectful. He understood the cultural nuances, the long-term objectives, and the need for mutual trust. Not all of our senior management figures were able to master that approach, not by any means; but Jenson nailed it consistently.