Button has no fear of Honda’s great unknown

Andrew Lewin 16/05/2015 at 12:4516/05/2015 at 12:18

8 November 1992. The date of McLaren-Honda’s last victory. 23 years ago in Adelaide, the partnership scored the last of its 44 wins. So far.

Rekindling the iconic pairing, Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai admits he has “very big pressure” on his shoulders to make it a success in future. It’s a future that Jenson Button was very nearly not a part of as he finished 2014 not knowing if he would be retained by McLaren.

Fast-forward six months and Button is in the least competitive McLaren he has ever driven, yet in an exclusive interview with F1i, his constant use of the word “excitement” displays the kind of exuberance you would have expected from his 20-year-old self entering the sport for the first time.

“At that point [the end of 2014] it was always … it’s never a nice position to be in but most of us at some point of our career find ourselves in that position, whether it’s at the end, in the middle or at the beginning," Button says. "If I wasn't in Formula One I’m sure I’d still be a happy individual, but I felt that this year would have been a very interesting year working with Honda once again and also working with the team.

“I’ve worked with Honda for many years and I’ve worked with McLaren for many years but not all together, so I was very excited about what could possibly happen. And it has been a really exciting year; we started off with no pace whatsoever at the start and have improved every race. I think it’s really exciting for everyone that’s involved to see the progress that we make every time that we step in to the car.

“Nobody can ask for any more. You’re never going to win the first race with a new manufacturer, it just does not happen these days. Formula One is so competitive and if we did that, what would it say about Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari? So it’s a very competitive sport right now and I think we’re doing a great job with what we have.”

The interest surrounding the McLaren-Honda project is huge, as an editor of a website I can tell you it didn’t take very long at all to realise everyone wants to know more about the team’s progress. For Button, it’s a similarly intriguing prospect within the team because he insists there is just no knowing when the upward curve will end.

“Every race we go to we’ll get asked the same question: ‘Do you think you’ve made enough progress? Are you where you thought you’d be? Where do you think you’re going to be?’ And none of us can answer it truthfully because we don’t know.

Now in his sixth season with McLaren, 2015 is the first time Button’s car has been powered by anything other than a Mercedes engine. Despite a new engine partner, team-mate and a number of further additions, Button says the foundations of what has made the team successful in the past remain in place.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a new start but it was obviously very difficult for all of us at the start of this year. We were two laps down at the first race and three and a half seconds off the pace. We knew it would be tough but you never know how tough it’s going to be. But the progress has been good and you always want more.

“We’re still not happy, even if we score points we won’t be happy. It’s still not going to feel great, it’s still not going to be a position we want to be in because you’ve got two drivers that have won world championships, you’ve got a team that have won many world championships and an engine manufacturer which has won many world championships. So we are here to win in the future but there is a lot of hard work here to do before that.

“Every race we go to we’ll get asked the same question: ‘Do you think you’ve made enough progress? Are you where you thought you’d be? Where do you think you’re going to be?’ And none of us can answer it truthfully because we don’t know.

“If we all work hard and we progress and we hope that we progress enough to make everyone feel that we’ve progressed enough … but inside we know it’s going to take a long time. We’ve just got to enjoy the moments when we do make big progress and we see difference in lap time and difference in feel with what we have.”

Going up against Fernando Alonso is also a huge motivator for Button, but he has rarely been able to test himself against the double world champion so far this season as the focus remains on Honda’s recovery. Button knows the challenge that awaits, but says so far the bigger satisfaction has come from working together rather than fighting each other for results.

“Fernando is, as we all know, a very complete driver. Fernando is a very fierce competitor in the race and to beat in a race you have to do an exceptional job but that’s what I’m here to do, to do an exceptional job. I’ve enjoyed working with Fernando so far this year and I think having two experienced drivers in this team makes a massive difference, especially with Honda because the feedback we give them makes a big difference.

“Not saying too much but I think we both seem to like the same car. We develop a car in the same way, we have the same feeling from a car, so it’s good for both of us. We’ll see what happens later this year but so far I’ve really enjoyed it.”

If the promised success does come for McLaren, then Button concedes it would be special to win a second world championship by beating Alonso. However, his biggest concern on that front appears to be whether progress can be made quickly enough so the opportunity arises while the two of them are still paired at the team.

“I personally think that Rubens [Barrichello] was an unbelievably good driver. He wasn’t able to show it for so many years but he was very talented, so for me beating Rubens [in 2009] also meant a lot. But yeah, if you beat your team-mate - and your team-mate is Fernando Alonso - to a world championship it means a great deal, of course.

“But I think we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, it’s going to be a little while before we’re fighting for a world championship, or this team is fighting for a world championship. So at the moment we’ve just go to enjoy where we are, what we’re doing, what we achieve every time we go out in the car and that’s what is the enjoyable part of this job right now.”