Jenson Button: ‘My respect for Frank Williams’

It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed since 20-year-old Jenson Button made his Formula 1 debut for Williams, in just his third season of car racing.

As Frank and Claire Williams step away from the sport that gave them so much, the 2009 world champion reflects on what the man who has been an F1 team owner since 1969 gave back – specifically to a sunny lad from Somerset with a raw talent but much to learn at the start of the new millennium.

“Frank has given so many of us an opportunity in F1,” said Button when we caught up with him last week. “I really enjoyed working with him. He was very relaxed with me, basically because I was so inexperienced.” His first was certainly a better season than his second, when he switched to Benetton, an experience that almost ended his career before it had really got going.

Button stunned in Formula Ford in his maiden season out of karts, showed further promise in Formula 3 and found himself already on the F1 radar at the end of 1999. After a test with Alain Prost’s team, the four-time champion recommended the kid to Frank Williams, who was looking for a driver in the wake of Alex Zanardi’s disappointing F1 return. Williams was beginning a partnership with BMW and with the accomplished Ralf Schumacher in the other car and limited expectations in the first year of a new engine supply, the team could afford to take a risk on a rookie.

“Frank said ‘I want to see you progressing, I want to see you making steps,’” said Button of a maiden season in which he scored half of Schumacher’s points, but outqualified the German at Spa and Suzuka. “For example, at Hockenheim, on the pit entry I was half a second slower than Ralf and Frank told me I needed to push the boundaries. So, I did. [In practice] I went off, broke my front wing and walked back to the pits.”

The moment was inevitably captured on TV and gave a snap-shot of the warmth Frank had for his young charge, who looked nervous and sheepish as he walked back to the garage – only to be welcomed with a big smile from the boss. “It was very embarrassing,” Jenson recalled. “Patrick [Head] was shouting at me: ‘Jenson! How could you do this in the pit lane entrance!’ Frank said, ‘No Patrick, I told him to push. It happened but it was the right thing. This is what learning’s all about.’”

But despite the nuggets of potential, Button failed to keep his drive for 2001. Juan Pablo Montoya, the explosive Colombian contracted to Williams but kept on a long leash in Indycars, was now free to return. Button pitched up at Benetton for the Italian clothing company’s final season in F1, to the team that was now owned by Renault.

The 2001 season was a disaster for him as he struggled to get to grips with the troubled B201. New team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella didn’t exactly fly either; the Italian only scored eight points. But Jenson managed just two in a team that didn’t really seem to want him.

“I really feel for Frank because F1 is his life”

“Yeah, I didn’t feel very welcome in the team when I walked in,” he says. “When I arrived at Williams I did, when I arrived at BAR [in 2003] I really did and when I moved to McLaren [as world champion in 2010], it was such a lovely atmosphere and was really welcoming. Benetton was the only time when I never felt welcome. I don’t know why. It felt very strange, very alien to me for a British driver with a British-based team. The car was a dog, it really was in 2001, but my team-mate was quicker than me. He could really drive it beyond its means, and fair play to him: Giancarlo in a bad car was the king. Nobody could beat him in that car.

“I struggled coming from a Williams that was very easy to drive, very easy to set up. Suddenly I found myself in a position where I just couldn’t work with this car. A lot of it was from my driving style because I would brake earlier, carry speed through a corner and it just didn’t work with the way the Benetton was set up – because it was set up around Giancarlo, and also because of the way the power unit was.”