Grapevine: Button reveals icy near-miss at factory

The 2009 world champion recently took delivery of a white Mercedes C63 road car, but speaking on the interview stage at AUTOSPORT International in Birmingham, described how the 500bhp machine became a bit of a handful in the icy conditions.

"I actually arrived at Woking about 10 days ago in the snow, and I was struggling a little bit with the car in the snow," Button related.

"To be fair, I should be ok at driving whatever, but I drove into the factory sideways and thought I was going to wipe out the entrance sign. I just gathered it up and left it there, because I couldn't drive it any further."

Button got away with it, but later discovered that there were benefits to being a McLaren F1 driver that he had not taken into account.

"They came to me and said that the tyres were on the limit of being illegal. They were still legal, but they were on the limit. So they took it away and they put new tyres on it for me. It was like going to the Kwik-Fit. How good's that? Fantastic. And they did a great job with it."