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DRIVERS: JENSON BUTTON

Name: Jenson Button
Nationality: Great Britain
Date of birth: January 19, 1980 - Frome, England

Few drivers have ever graduated to F1 with the fanfare and furor which surrounded the announcement of Jenson Button as a Williams driver in February 2000.

Two years earlier the 20 year-old from Frome in Somerset had been about to embark on his first season of Formula Ford after a glittering career in karting. Now he made the front pages of half the British national daily newspapers.

Button's father, John, raced with distinction in rallycross in the Seventies (against Alexander Wurz's father Franz), and then began entering his eight year-old son in Cadet kart races. Jenson began winning almost immediately, and took the British Championship in his first full season. Before long he had wiped the floor with his rivals in the highly competitive British Junior TKM Championship, before heading to Europe. There he distinguished himself in Formula A and Super A, taking on and often beating the cream of the world's karters. Only a broken chain in the final of the World Championship prevented him taking the crown.

The switch to cars brought immediate success with Haywood Racing's Mygale in 1998, as Button swept to the British Championship. His domination pushed him into Formula Three by 1999, where he won two races and finished third and best-placed rookie in the British Championship despite the relative disadvantage of running a Renault engine against the more-powerful Mugen-Hondas.

An extraordinarily mature and composed young driver, Button combined fearsome speed with smoothness and aggression. His first taste of F1 came courtesy of McLaren late in 1999, as his prize for winning the prestigious McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver Award the previous season. That December he staggered Prost by bettering Jean Alesi's times in a 10-lap test run in Barcelona. He seemed so impressive that team owner Sir Frank Williams was prevailed upon to give him a tryout for the role of test driver, but such was Button's pace that it became a shoot-out with Brazilian Bruno Junqueira for the second race seat. Despite his youth Button won, and made a spectacular debut in Australia, where he matched (and sometimes beat) the race times of much-vaunted teammate Ralf Schumacher.

After a decent first season at Williams he was forced to move to Renault to make way for Juan Pablo Montoya. Button's two seasons at Renault were disappointing but for 2003 he signed for the BAR team, initially as team mate to Jacques Villeneuve.

Button's progress against Villeneuve was impressive and by the end of the year Villeneuve had gone and Button was the number one driver. In 2004 the BAR-Honda combination was much more successful and Jenson scored 10 podium finishes and was third in the World Championship despite failing to win a race. In the middle of the year it was announced that he would be going back to Williams in 2005 but BAR challenged the deal and the Contract Recognition Board ruled in BAR's favour. Button stayed with BAR. A year later he decided that he wanted to stay with the team in 2006 rather than go to Williams as he was contracted to do. The battle fought the previous year was thus fought in reverse with Jenson finally buying way out of the Williams deal to take up a huge offer from Honda.

It turned out to be a good decision as Williams struggled and Honda improved dramatically and in Hungary Button won his first Grand Prix victory and went on to finish sixth in the Drivers' World Championship.

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