Why Button's motorsport journey is far from over

Four years have passed since the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix, a race that is widely remembered for Max Verstappen's charge to the podium in horrendous conditions and Felipe Nasr battling into the points to save his Sauber team, while effectively sinking the Manor squad.

Jenson Button's drive to finish 16th and last at the track where he had clinched the 2009 world championship, as McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso salvaged a point for 10th, barely registered as a footnote. But the penultimate race of his swansong F1 season (he would return for a final time at Monaco in 2017, subbing for Alonso when the Spaniard was given permission to skip F1's grandee race for the Indianapolis 500) served as proof to Button that he'd made the right decision in stepping away after 17 years.

In his book, How to be an F1 driver, Button revealed that he experienced the fear factor in Brazil for the first time in his career. Would it have been any different if he had been planning to stay on for 2017?

"It would have been completely different, definitely," he tells Autosport. "My head wasn't in it, and the stupid thing was, those were my conditions. Those were where I was at my best and I couldn't show that because I was too scared. That proved that it was the right time.

"I look at F1 now and think, 'I wish I'd done a couple more years', but it's easy looking back and saying that because you forget that I was really tired at the end of it and mentally, just drained. I needed to get out.

"Should I have gone back and done a year or two? Maybe, but I've had so much fun racing in Japan - it was a lot more relaxed and more fun."

Fun has certainly been on the agenda ever since, as Button has taken on multiple pursuits crossing the full breadth of motorsport. Now based on the United States' west coast, he's remained in touch with current events in F1 through his work as a pundit for Sky, and expanded his horizons by spending two years racing Super GT for Honda in Japan - he won the 2018 title - as well as making his debut at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2018, and contesting the Baja 1000 off-road race last year.

He's also embraced team co-ownership with the Jenson Team Rocket RJN squad and become a father for the first time. Now aged 40, his passion for motorsport burns as brightly as it ever did.

"I feel like I'm 20 years old still," he says. "The reactions are still there. There's just a few more wrinkles but that doesn't matter when you're driving a racing car."

It's precisely this passion that meant he was recently out racing one of his own team's McLaren 720S GT3s in the British GT Championship's final round at Silverstone. In a year dominated by the pandemic, Button's racing activities had largely been restricted to the virtual world until he teamed up with life-long friend and team co-owner Chris Buncombe "to blow the cobwebs out". The pair finished 14th in a challenging outing hampered by a lack of pre-event testing.

Autosport meets with Button at a chilly Silverstone a day prior to his first test in the McLaren, not long before the UK's second national lockdown is announced. He's also brought along one of his title-winning Brawn chassis, decked out in its Abu Dhabi GP livery - so chosen because he raced it as a world champion, having wrapped up the title in the previous race at Interlagos - for a photoshoot with the McLaren GT3. It serves as a fitting illustration of then and now.

"There's no point having your name on something unless it's great, and I want this team to be successful. It already has been for years, but now we've got us two a bit more involved, we hope to help this team succeed even more" Jenson Button

Button says team ownership and helping young talent progress is something he and Buncombe have "talked about for years". Button's father John was a regular on the British rallycross scene in the 1970s, finishing runner-up in the 1976 British championship, and Button Jr looked into the possibility of forming a rallycross team "out of passion really" after testing an Olsbergs MSE Honda Civic GRC at Sebring in January 2017. He even approached Alain Prost to see whether the four-time world champion would hypothetically be interested.

"They're just amazing bits of kit," says Button with a glint in his eye. "The aim was to have a team, but looking at the financials, the people that were involved at the time were manufacturers - Peugeot, VW - and they were putting in €10million-plus per year. You just can't compete against that much money, so it wasn't worth even putting our foot in the door."

Conversation then turned to setting down roots in endurance racing. Buncombe's long connection with RJN boss Bob Neville, whose team won the 2015 Blancpain Endurance Series title with Buncombe's younger brother Alex as part of the driver line-up, was a logical port of call and a favourable alternative to starting from scratch.

The renamed team campaigned a Honda NSX in the Silver Cup class of the GT World Challenge Europe last year before switching to McLaren this year, taking a late decision to focus attentions on British GT when the pandemic hit.

"Chris and I sat down with Bob and we thought this was a great partnership for the future, a fantastic base," says Button. "These guys have won multiple championships in GT racing, they've experienced off-road racing, and that experience is so important in adapting to the new car, but also because of the people they know within the paddock and knowing the people running the series. It's exciting because we have some good ideas that can help this team succeed."

The team's name is also significant, heralding a return of the Rocket name used by his father's kart engine business, which won 11 British championships and supplied top names including a young Lewis Hamilton. After Button Sr died in 2014, Button decided "it was a great way to keep the name going".

"As soon as we announced the team, so many drivers mentioned on social media, 'It's great to see the Rocket name back, I remember racing with one of John's engines' or 'I remember one of John's engines beating me'," says Button, who admits to still finding it "weird" that Jenson is in the name, having been overruled on its inclusion by Buncombe. "For me, the name of the team should be Rocket RJN to be fair, but it's great to have it back. The idea is to go on to win other championships, British championships, European championships and world championships with that name."

Rookie line-up James Baldwin and Michael O'Brien (below, left with Button) won on their GT3 debuts at Oulton Park and remained in mathematical title contention until last weekend's finale, ultimately finishing fourth in a successful first year for the team with the 720S.

While the day-to-day running is still headed up by Neville - Button jokes: "I definitely don't sit down and discuss financials" - the world champion's input is considerable when it really counts, on race weekends. Button attends every team debrief over Zoom "to hear what they've got to say when it's fresh and discuss what could be better in terms of the car, the team but also where the drivers feel they can be better in themselves, because that's where my strength is".

"I mean, we do talk about [financials], quite a bit actually," he clarifies. "We talk regularly about moving forward with whether and where we're going to be racing or with what cars, in what category. I would say I'm probably more involved than people think.

"There's no point having your name on something unless it's great, and I want this team to be successful. It already has been for years, but now we've got us two a bit more involved, we hope to help this team succeed even more."

In the short term, Button is eyeing a return to European competition in the GT World Challenge, but his long-term ambition is to partner with a manufacturer and race at the Le Mans 24 Hours, which he labels "the biggest motor race in the world". While conceding that currently "the World Endurance Championship isn't as competitive as you'd like it to be" - a season-low grid of 24 cars, including just two LMP1s, contested the Bahrain finale last weekend - brighter times are expected for sportscar racing in the future.

The latterly moribund LMP1 era will be replaced by Le Mans Hypercar next year, with Peugeot set to join Toyota from 2022. There is also hope that lower costs involved in the LMDh ruleset, which will allow the same LMP2-based cars to compete in both the WEC and IMSA SportsCar Championship from 2023, will entice manufacturers to challenge for an outright Le Mans victory.

"That has to be the aim for the future - if you're in endurance racing, you want to go to Le Mans," Button says. "The dream obviously would be for this team to race at Le Mans and for me to be in the car when that happens. I might be too old by then, I'll have to wait and see."

"Most of the time, people go [to Japan] thinking they're going to kick ass, and they get destroyed by someone they've never heard of before" Jenson Button

Button's remark shows he is aware that he has a shelf-life as a driver, but he is determined to make full use of the years ahead to continue his personal mission, outlined in his aforementioned book, to become the "complete driver".

His experiences outside the F1 bubble have reinforced the point that "there's always good drivers wherever you go", and that the skillset required to be quick in F1 - which is "very different to anything else" - has relatively little in common with other disciplines.

"When you watch an F1 car and you compare it to anything else, it's another level," he says. "It would embarrass any GT car on the circuit, especially now. A lot of the corners here [at Silverstone] are tough corners in a GT car, but you don't even lift in F1. Copse, it's easy flat, you don't even think about lifting - that's just madness. So, you learn certain things but weight transfer is not one of them, and understanding suspension travel isn't one of them either."

All of which meant Super GT took some getting used to at first, not helped by having to wait until team-mate Naoki Yamamoto had finished debriefing with the engineers in Japanese first. "I'd be sat there like a lemon a bit, the number two driver!" he jokes.

"Most of the time, people go there thinking they're going to kick ass, and they get destroyed by someone they've never heard of before," Button continues. "I tested for days with the Super GT car and I couldn't get near my team-mate for a long time, just because of the weight transfer and the feel of it. We didn't have tyre warmers either, which didn't help.

"But then I'd jump in the LMP1 car and I was on the pace on the first day. I'm used to the high downforce, carrying lots of speed, good change of direction. I can really find the limit with that, but when the car is heavier it's a lot more difficult. That's why it's exciting, it's more of a challenge."

Although his preliminary foray at Le Mans with SMP Racing's catchily titled BR Engineering BR1-AER was a disappointment - the car he shared with Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin was delayed for the best part of three hours by an engine sensor issue before the end of the first hour, leading to a hard night of slog for the prospect of little reward before, cruelly, the engine failed in the final hour - it was not an entirely wasted experience.

Knowing that his victory prospects against the Toyota juggernaut were slim, Button used the event as an opportunity to soak up everything that makes it unique and prepare for a return "with a proper team to fight for glory in the future". When that return will be, he doesn't know.

"I want to be racing in something next year and the idea is still to race at Le Mans in a competitive car and go for the outright win," he says. "I obviously raced there in 2018 and the whole idea was to get the experience to race in the future with manufacturers when they came back into the sport. COVID hasn't helped that, but I think we'll see over the next couple of years a lot of good manufacturers that are interested."

Compared to the relative order of F1, where all 20 drivers are known to each other, Le Mans is an altogether different challenge.

"There's 55-odd cars and each one has three drivers in it, so it's crazy when you go to the drivers' briefing and you only know 20% of the drivers or less!" he says. "That was an unusual experience for me getting in there as an F1 world champion, racing against guys that I'd never heard of before, and amateurs, but the whole week was awesome, I loved it.

"It was such a special experience working with the drivers and developing a car and wanting them to be as quick as you if not quicker. You're going through the heat of the day to the cold of the night, sunset, sunrise, and the car changing from hour one
to hour 23 because everything is getting a bit tired.

"Going there, I have that experience already, but I would still like to have more experience. If I could race there next year, and if it was the right situation, I would - if we could find that situation."

Racing in IMSA might appear an obvious avenue to do so, "but finding the right situation is tricky" due to a limited number of manufacturers also competing at Le Mans. Current Daytona Prototype international cars are not eligible for the French classic, although the next-generation machines from 2023 will be.

"We don't know who's going to be involved," Button says. "I hope there are six or seven manufacturers racing around the world in that category, and if that's the case then I'll jump at the chance to get in something. I'm always keeping my eyes open for opportunities in endurance racing."

In the meantime, Button is planning a return to off-road racing - "The only time I've ever paid for racing", he laughs - in March in the Mint 400 in the Nevada desert. Learning how to traverse the big bumps at speed is a world away from negotiating Copse, Maggotts and Becketts, but is all part of his quest to have fun and learn at the same time.

"I think when I run out of things to learn, I'll stop racing, but there are so many different categories that have different skillsets that you need to succeed" Jenson Button

"You go slower and you hit them harder, so it's just another world," he says. "It's like when you get in a downforce car for the first time and you think, 'I can't go through the corner that quick.' But the quicker you go, the more downforce you get and the easier it is."

Button's smile widens as he recalls racing in the desert on the Baja, where some fans will "direct you knowing that they've made a trap, they've made a massive jump that you hit and go 20 feet in the air, and you might not land it either. It's a lawless race," he grins.

So how close is he to achieving his stated aim?

"There's so much to learn still," he says. "I think when I run out of things to learn, I'll stop racing, but there are so many different categories that have different skillsets that you need to succeed. It's all driving a car, but you still have to learn other things to find
that extra few tenths in a different series.

"That's why racing in Baja was so fun because it's completely different. I'm still shit at driving a Baja truck, but I'm getting better. Compared to the best in the world, I'm miles off the pace, but it's learning what suspension can do and weight transfer, it's definitely unlocking something which is giving me more experience when I race in something else.

"I'm still not at my maximum and I never will be. I'm always going to keep learning and that's why it's so exciting. There's so much I want to do that I will run out of years, that's the biggest issue.

"The great thing about the off-roading is you can do it until you're 70 and still be competitive, it's whether you just switch your brain off when you go over the big bumps..."

Somehow, it seems Jenson Button isn't going to be sliding quietly off into the California sunset.