Jenson Button, the underrated F1 champion

Lewis Hamilton is Formula 1’s latest sensation, a driver of seemingly unparalleled precision and speed that has been able to rack up four F1 World Titles in a row thus equalling Michael Schumacher’s record of seven titles. Hamilton has re-written many of F1’s records in the past seven years that he’s been driving Mercedes-AMG Petronas’ sterling single-seaters that have been, more often than not, dominant in what’s become known as the turbo-hybrid era.

Signed by Ron Dennis fresh off his successful title assault with the Brawn GP outfit, Button drove for McLaren between 2010 and 2016, partnering Hamilton for the first three years of his spell with the Woking-based team.


In their first year as team-mates, Hamilton came out on top with three wins to Button’s two but, handed the initially uncompetitive MP4-26, Button squashed Hamilton to become vice-champion in a 2011 season that included that phenomenal win in the Canadian Grand Prix. Hamilton, with more retirements to his name, finished the year in fifth. The partnership-turned-rivalry ended on a high in 2012 as the two Britons were separated by just two championship points at the conclusion of the season with Lewis edging out ahead thanks to his four wins, double what Button could muster.


You’d think, then, that a guy who is a former F1 champ himself and who was also able to beat Hamilton, the best driver in the world right now (and, perhaps, ever), would have no issues transitioning to GT racing, right? Your intuition would be backed by the fact that Button also became the GT500-class champion in Japan’s Super GT series back in 2017 driving a mid-engined Honda NSX that’s basically a GT car. But, alas, you’d be wrong.

GT racing hasn’t been on Jenson Button’s radar until recently

Button has been driving race cars since he can remember debuting in the British Formula Ford Championship all the way back in 1998 at the age of 18 after a little over a decade spent in karting. He won both the championship and the Formula Ford Festival (the marquee event of the Formula Ford universe) at his first attempt and debuted in F1 just two years later.

20 years have passed since Button made his F1 debut and in that time the Englishman has never driven a GT car. Sure, he made his Spa 24 Hours debut in ’99 driving an underpowered BMW that foreshadowed his arrival at Williams-BMW but his busy life within the F1 bubble did not allow him to race anywhere else. More recently, in the years since he’s called time on his career in motorsport’s highest echelon, he raced that Honda NSX in Super GT – which is considered to be a combination between a touring car (because similar cars have been used in the DTM), a GT car, and a prototype because the underpinnings are unique to this category. A handful of outings in the BR Engineering-built and SMP Racing-backed LMP1 machine allowed him to gain more experience in long-distance events but, still, the BR1 is even further away from a GT than the NSX.


This leads us to the 2020 season that Button had already decided to sit out after parting ways with Team Kunimitsu, the team operating the Raybrig NSX in Japan. His outfit, named Jenson Team Rocket RJN, that he established together with Chris Buncombe was, however, set to continue on in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup having completed its maiden season in 2019. The addition of James Baldwin, ’The World’s Fastest Gamer’, to the team got our attention and we kept following Baldwin’s progress even as the team switched to the British GT Championship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A surprising number of pole position and even a victory in the first race at Oulton Park certainly put Baldwin on the map for years to come but he didn’t stop there as he backed it all up with other solid drives – enough for him and McLaren Junior Driver Michael O’Brien to arrive at the season finale with an outside shot at the title. Held at Silverstone, the three-hour-long title-decider brought even more headlines when it became clear that Jenson Team Rocket RJN would field a second McLaren 720S GT3 for Button and Buncombe to drive.

The 2020 Silverstone 500, a race for the ages

The British GT is, arguably, one of the strongest national GT series in the entire world and, even in the midst of a pandemic, 20 GT3-spec cars showed up to race in the #SilverstoneShowdown at the beginning of November 2020. On top of that, there were also 12 GT4 models on the grid and an unprecedented five GTC examples (three Ferrari 488 Challenge and two Porsche 911 Cup cars). With both the GT3 and the GT4 titles still on the line, the Silverstone race had all the ingredients to become a classic, and Button was there to mix it with the seasoned veterans.

Granted, Jenson is himself a veteran but, nowadays, racers rarely do radical crossovers from one discipline to another – which was the norm back in the ’60s and ’70s – meaning that you’ve got folks that end up being specialized in only a single area of the sport. Fernando Alonso with his two Le Mans wins and also his outings at Indianapolis and, on the other hand, Nico Hulkenberg who also won Le Mans while still racing in F1, are the well-known exceptions to the rule in the past few years.


Button, however, wasn’t the only new kid on the block since Rob Collard, a veteran of the British Touring Car Championship, had also made the switch over to GT racing with the distinction that Rob did it at the beginning of the year meaning that, by the time the British GT arrived at Silverstone, he’d completed five other race meetings behind the wheel of Barwell Motorsport’s Lamborghini Huracan Evo GT3 and the Spa 24 Hours for good measure.

The 52-year-old Collard sat on the pole for the Silverstone 500 as he and team-mate Sandy Mitchell looked to overhaul the six-point margin that separated them from championship leaders Sam De Haan and Patrick Kujala. With 37.5 points offered to the winner, two other driver pairings could still dream of the title, Baldwin and O’Brien included. Having said that, Button didn’t come to Silverstone to help Baldwin and O’Brien but to help himself as the 40-year-old had never won a race around Silverstone’s GP course – an unkind record he wanted to set straight.


Even GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup regular Buncombe (rated Silver in the FIA’s driver rankings) struggled and morale wasn’t high ahead of Sunday, November 8.

The race got on to a good start for Baldwin who was quick to jump from fourth on the grid to second, breathing in Rob Collard’s neck. However, a couple of incidents towards the tail end of the pack caused the safety car to come out barely 10 minutes into the race. With the race’s dynamic altered by the early caution period, Baldwin was brought in to pass the car over to O’Brien and, similarly, Button took over from Buncombe.

Over the next two hours and a half, Baldwin and O’Brien battled for the win but ultimately couldn’t topple the No. 78 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini of Mitchell and Collard that also ran without a pitstop handicap (a system that sees the cars that have been on the podium in the most recent round sit stationary an extended period of time during one of the stops in order to avoid the situation where one car dominates the series). Button, meanwhile, struggled with the ABS and couldn’t get the back to work to his liking – not surprising give that he’s never raced a car equipped with ABS before. Check the video below to find out more about Button’s first race weekend in a bona fide GT car and to see how James Baldwin almost became British GT champion at the first time of asking.