Jenson Button's knotted Williams past

Jean-Paul Sartre once said 'I hate victims who respect their executioners'.

Admirable though that is, perhaps he'd not last long in F1. Therein, realpolitik is often what prevails. Despite occasional immediate appearances suggesting otherwise, grudges often come a distant second.

As an example, I recall some years ago in what must have been the late 1990s watching a Grand Prix wherein the TV feed cut to Alain Prost - then boss of the team that took his name - sat on the pit wall. But who was it sat alongside him? None other than Cesare Fiorio. The same Cesare Fiorio that was Prost's boss at Ferrari; that infamously Prost didn't see eye-to-eye with; that Prost was instrumental (apparently) in forcing out. 'How could Fiorio bring himself to work with him again?' I thought in my naivety. Little did I know.

But of course it's not an isolated case. Far from it. This year we witnessed the long-assumed unthinkable rapprochement of Kimi Raikkonen and Luca Montezemolo. Heck, even the rumour of the incendiary Fernando Alonso and Ron Dennis pairing happening again while considered unlikely hasn't been laughed all the way out of court.

Perhaps it's just the sport's way - all's fair in love and F1 after all. Maybe they learn not to take things personally, even when knives are plunged into their back. Perhaps it's more simple than that and reflects F1's rather exclusive status, with a (very) finite number of places in it, the places really sought after even more so, meaning most are able to park such things in a mental recess if it entails not being the one without a seat when the music stops.

Jenson Button - subject to two tugs of love
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It could all be just as well in particular for Jenson Button, on the subject of seats and making sure you have one. It's a hardly-concealed fact that his at McLaren for next year and beyond ain't certain as things stand; that McLaren's been scanning for alternatives. One such alternative mooted is the prodigious Valtteri Bottas (though quite what the Finn would get out of this is less clear to me). There has been some speculation that if that does indeed happen then Button could make the opposite journey, back to Williams. I didn't think it at all coincidence that he said some very nice things about the Grove team recently.

He has previous with the team too. We all know that Jenson made his F1 debut for Williams in 2000, but the previous is a little more knotted than that.

Jenson in his freshman year at Grove 14 years ago was to a large extent on a hiding to nothing, as he was there as a stopgap until Juan Pablo Montoya's CART contract wound down, meaning despite impressing his fate of being dumped at the season's end was mostly inevitable. The next year he drove for Benetton instead. There he experienced second-season syndrome in 2001, but managed to recover (the team now with the Renault moniker) in 2002, though not enough to avoid being ditched again, this time in preference for the incumbent test driver going by the name of Fernando Alonso.

Looking back: 2002 - F1 goes bad

Whatever you think about F1 now - indeed whatever you think about F1 for as long as the sport continues to exist - you can likely be thankful that it wasn't 2002. Then we had an F1 in crisis, one that was wrestling with itself. The sport perhaps wasn't quite dying, but it was certainly experiencing unpleasant symptoms of illness, and increasingly was staring at its deformed self in the mirror with rather a lot of disgust. As the year progressed more and more felt that radical and immediate surgery was not only desirable but essential to ensure F1’s renewed health.

The sport had faced crises before of course, but unlike those, such as in 1955 and 1994, this wasn't about safety. It was about the sport simply not delivering. No one wanted to watch the 'show' that it was serving up; reflecting this viewing numbers both at the track and on TV dwindled.

Dominant Michael Schumacher won the title as he liked
Credit: Mathieu Felten / CC

In 2002 the sport endured a year of soporific races wherein the Ferraris were simply on another level, particularly so that of its lead driver Michael Schumacher. The potency Ferrari 'dream team' of this era, with the great Schumi backed by Jean Todt, Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne, engine man Paolo Martinelli and others, is well-documented. This was right in the middle of its scarcely credible run of five drivers' and constructors' championship doubles, and perhaps appropriately it was by far the most crushing among those. There were 17 races in 2002, and Ferrari won 15 of them. Only in five races at most did even a token challenge to the red cars last beyond a few laps, quite literally. Moreover, for Schumacher the 17 rounds divided up as 11 won, five second places and a single third place - a day on which his front wing was knocked off at the first corner thus sending him to the back. Never once did he fail to finish, nor indeed did he fail to finish on the podium. And his record could have been even more towering: of those five second places he probably would have won in Monaco had passing been remotely possible there, and the remaining instances of being a runner-up were to his stable mate Rubens Barrichello and at least some of them appeared rather ceded.

Again, single car domination in F1 was nothing new by 2002. We'd seen similar, most notably in 1988 with the McLaren MP4-4s sweeping the board. But then at least we had the intrigue of the two drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost facing off; now Schumi was on an intra-team pedestal. And moreover even with its domination, and with two drivers' and three constructors' title in the preceding three years, to ensure that it was Schumacher that prevailed with the drivers' title Ferrari managed races from the pit wall with a caution and micro-management that often entered the realms of the absurd. As a result the two red cars routinely cruised around at the front apparently at half throttle, its drivers under strict orders from their masters. Even the mathematical tying up of the drivers' title altered little, as focus then switched onto ensuring Rubens Barrichello's second place in the table, meaning we had the same again expect with Rubinho ahead and Schumi sitting dutifully behind. Almost nothing was left to chance; it’s no exaggeration to say that in 2002 one knew far in advance with almost complete certainty how a Grand Prix would unfold.