When Button swapped F1 for rallycross

The scene is one of Stygian murk: gloomy skies, lashing rain, mud. But no matter, for the Kent countryside is cheered by the rorty rumble of a hopped-up flat-four engine, and the gale brings a tinge of hyperactive hydrocarbons. Today Jenson Button's personal and professional lives come full circle in more ways than one.

Not only is Jenson sliding behind the wheel of a monster Volkswagen Beetle rallycross car similar to the one in which his father campaigned during the 1970s, but we also find ourselves at the Lydden Hill rallycross circuit in Kent, a frequent John Button stamping ground back in the day, later bought by Jenson's McLaren team with a view to developing it into their equivalent of Ferrari's Fiorano test track.

This being southeast England, the local burghers swiftly dispatched that notion into the long grass, and Lydden, which staged the world's first rallycross event in 1967, retained its status as Britain's home of chaotic multi-surface motorsport.

"I was very young, so I remember going to Brands Hatch and some other places but I don't remember being at Lydden," says Jenson. "It's been fun making these connections with the past. There's a video on YouTube with Murray Walker commentating on a race from Lydden Hill. My dad tips Paul Springett's Mini into a roll and Murray shouts: 'END over END over END!' They're nice memories to have of the old boy racing."

Jenson isn't the only Formula 1 driver with rallycross roots; former Benetton and Williams racer Alex Wurz, now chairman of the GPDA, grew up watching his father campaign in a Beetle, too, although that one bore scant resemblance to Wolfsburg's finest under the skin. "Super-cool!" Wurz chortles to F1 Racing when he hears about today's mission. "My dad's car weighed about 400kg and was mostly plastic..."

The Beetle here is raced by owner James Harrold in the Retro Rallycross Challenge, and it too has been finessed some way beyond Dr Porsche's original design specifications. Harrold's Uncle Peter converted the 1974 1303S model into a racer in the 1980s, running it in four-wheel drive for several years before reverting to two.

Button revelled in his rallycross experience, unsettling Coulthard in the process © LAT

"Back then, my old man's Beetle had about 200bhp," says Jenson. "That's all they had in the day. It was normally aspirated. This one has been souped up a bit since then. It's the vee-dub engine with Subaru heads and a turbo. That thing at the back? It's not a wing, it's a radiator. Everything is right at the back in terms of weight. Getting it sideways is easy - it's getting it back that's difficult!"

To illustrate, Jenson scurries out into the rain and jumps into the car. He's joined by the BBC's David Coulthard in the passenger seat, apprehension writ large upon his doughty features. Firing up the flat-four engine, Jenson finds a gear - the ponderous 'box is a vintage item, too, to comply with the rules - applies pedal to metal and bangs out the clutch. The Beetle's rear wheels briefly paw at the slippery asphalt before it twangs forwards like a dragster, DC's face at the window pale as Banquo's ghost.

Towards the scene of his father's aforementioned end-over-end misdemeanour Jenson brakes late and pitches in, slithering sideways.

He cannot resist the allure of the dirt loop, slewing right onto the mud and gravel, sending up rooster tails of muck, going sideways once more into

the bend and almost skimming the inside barrier with the Beetle's nose.

After a handful of laps he pulls in, smiling broadly, while DC excuses himself to seek shelter and, no doubt, a restorative.

"It was mega because it's wet," Jenson enthuses. "This thing - it's got no power, then it's got absolutely loads of it, because although it's got 600bhp it's turbocharged so it all arrives at once.

The Beetle, built to period style, delivers a serious amount of power off the line... © LAT

"DC was feeling a bit rough after the first lap. Well, neither of us are experts on gravel. So on the dirt I was driving it with my thumb hooked through the steering wheel, completely crossed up. He's going, 'JB you're going to hit the barrier!' But we didn't.

"I got the launch right, probably more by luck than judgement and by Turn 1 I was totally confused - I'd gone through all the gears, I thought: 'I suppose I ought to brake now...'

"Then you've got this puddle, then gravel, it's a huge culture shock. I think with these cars you brake when you see the barrier rather than because it's the right place to brake.

"It's proper old-school racing; just power, no electronics, no weight-based performance balancing, and you're allowed to hit one another provided you don't actually spin anyone round.

"It's just amazing. Awful to drive but amazing at the same time. The gearbox is like porridge. To be legal in the Retro Rallycross series it has to be a period item, and it's the same type that was used in the McLaren Can-Am cars in the early 1970s. Five speeds and built to take the torque of a big-block V8!"

The McLaren connections just keep on rolling in, though the famously fastidious and dirt-averse Ron Dennis would no doubt view rallycross as an utterly ghastly business. What's been most peculiar, though, has been the sight of a driver rightly held up as a pillar of smoothness, a veritable latter-day Prost, spending so much time sideways.

"It's funny actually," he says, "because back in 2000, when I first came to F1, I went to a circuit up in Norway owned by Harald Huysman, who was part of my management team at the time. He had these BMW-powered school cars.

"My dad and I went out on the circuit, it was soaking wet, and every time I saw him he was completely sideways. He just could not drive this thing in a straight line.

"Afterwards I said, 'How the hell do you do that?' He said, 'What do you mean? That's the only way I've driven a racing car in my whole life...'"

Silky-smooth F1 style was dropped for sideways fun in the VW © LAT

It's at this point you realise that Jenson is now one of Formula 1's elder statesmen. For so many years, he formed a characterful paddock double-act with his father, who, sadly, as of January last year, is no longer with us.

John's own racing career largely predated Jenson's life and much of that time is preserved not in Jenson's memories but in family recollections, photographs, and scraps of television footage.

"That's right," says Jenson. "I saw him race in the early '80s but that was in the Golf he had. The Beetle was the car he loved. He built it himself - he did autocross in an orange one, then he built a yellow one for rallycross.

"He was doing really well so VW gave him a Golf, because that was their newest, most modern car, the new greatest thing - and he hated it. It was front-wheel drive, so he completely stripped it and rebuilt it. He made it better, but he still loved the Beetle more."

Racing drivers are so often called upon to perform tricks for the cameras on their days off, either for television or magazines (or, as is the case today, both).

But this gravel-strewn rampage has clearly meant more to Jenson than just a dutiful ticking of the publicity box. It's connected him with his past in more ways than one, hence his beaming grin.

"There's a guy here - Rob Gibson - who used to race with my dad. He runs a 6R4 now, but he was in a Porsche when my dad was in a Beetle. Doesn't sound very fair, does it? It was very interesting to meet him.

"There's some great footage of a Porsche wiping my dad out at the top of the hill. I said to Rob, 'Was that you?' He said, 'I don't think so...'"