Button: The highs and lows of my F1 career

With his F1 career now properly over, Jenson Button sits down with Maurice Hamilton, for F1 Racing, to talk about setting the record straight in his new book, Life to the Limit, the relationship with his late dad, and plans for 'retirement'...

Dec 22, 2017, 1:04 PM

Upd: Dec 22, 2017, 1:27 PM

Hard to believe that it's 17 years, almost to the day, since I had my first one-to-one with Jenson Button. It was a nervy moment for us both as we sat down in the bland office of the insurance company who were sponsoring Williams and discussed his debut season in F1.

I'd got off on the wrong foot at the start of the year by mildly questioning Jenson's qualifications (in F3) for a drive with a top team (an observation that John Button would cheerfully remind me of when his boy went on to qualify superbly at Spa and Suzuka). Our meeting that day was soothed by the quelling of doubts on both sides; a realisation on his part that I was not about to stick the boot in after a tricky season, and considerable relief on my side that the interview was not being stilted by a gangling 20-year-old bearing a grudge.