Jenson Button

The 2009 Formula 1 season is the stuff of legend, and it certainly made one of Button. Time to look back at how it happened, and ahead to what's still in store 

- James Page

THINGS DIDN’T LOOK good for Jenson Button as the 2009 Formula 1 season approached. The previous year had been a disaster sixth place in Spain being the best he could drag out of Honda’s recalcitrant RA108 and it got even worse in the December, when the Japanese manufacturer announced that it would be withdrawing with immediate effect. Hundreds of jobs were at risk at the Brackley factory, and not until early March was it announced that team principal Ross Brawn had secured the team’s future by leading a management buy-out.

Seven months later, Button was crowned World Champion and Brawn GP clinched the Constructors’ title. It was an achievement to rank with the greatest sporting upsets, and it’s little wonder that Button is currently working with movie star Keanu Reeves on a documentary about that fairy-tale season.

The development programme for the car that would become the Brawn BGP 001 had started early in 2008. With new regulations coming in for 2009, that head start paid dividends in particular thanks to the adoption of a clever double diffuser’ set-up but the design was compromised by the late switch to a customer Mercedes engine rather than the intended Honda. The car first turned a wheel at Silverstone, and how it performed was not uppermost in Button’s mind.

‘The important thing was that we were actually there, he recalls. We didn’t even think we'd be racing and most of the factory thought they'd be made redundant at the end of 2008. When the engine started, there was a big round of applause, a lot of excitement just to be going racing. The big thing was that there weren't any issues. You normally have issues at the start of a test, especially when everything’s been rushed together, but at that point you don’t know how competitive the car is going to be’