Jenson Button opened up on fiery exchange with Lewis Hamilton: ‘Being weird’

Jenson Button backed his former teammate Lewis Hamilton this week, claiming the Briton is “more complete” than rival Max Verstappen. Verstappen is the current world champion, having pipped Hamilton to the title on the last lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last season. But Button, who drove with Hamilton at McLaren between 2010 and 2012, believes his compatriot is still the best. Button told Sky Sports: “[Is Verstappen the most] naturally gifted? Yes. Is he the best? I don’t know if he’s the best driver that has ever lived or the best in F1 now.

“When you look at Lewis, you think he is a much more complete racing driver with a lot more experience, maybe that’s why.

“He [Verstappen] has got to work hard. Even if you think you’re the best, there’s still more you can do to be better. That’s where Michael Schumacher was so strong.”

Button himself has one world title, and is accustomed to the tension of competition at the highest level.

In 2017, Button revealed that he and Hamilton didn’t always see eye-to-eye while teammates.

Writing in his biography ‘Life on the Limit’, he recounted his amazement at discovering Hamilton had publicly released the team’s telemetry information on social media to show why Button had out-qualified him at Spa in 2012.

Button continued: “Quite what was in his thinking, I couldn’t say.

“Certainly any displeasure he was showing was aimed at the team, not me, but I ended up being collateral damage because you don’t make telemetry public. You just don’t.

“I wasn’t gasping in horror concerning his use of ‘WTF’ [‘what the f***’]. I like to see drivers expressing themselves.

“The screen-grab showed the kind of things you work hard to keep hidden from your rivals.

“I made my feelings known about that. The official version was that I was ‘disappointed’. Had I gone with my unofficial reaction it would have made ‘WTF’ seem very tame indeed.

“But at the same time I knew it wasn’t personal. Bit dumb maybe. But not an ‘I hate Jenson’ thing so much as an ‘I’m fed up with McLaren’ thing.”

Button also reflected on a time when Hamilton confronted him at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix.

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In Malaysia in 2013, Rosberg was given a strict team order to stay behind Hamilton, but the German was not happy.

Then in 2014, there was the wheel-to-wheel fight in Bahrain, where it later transpired Rosberg had defied team orders to stay ahead of Hamilton.

In 2015, things continued to escalate when Hamilton won the title early in the US Grand Prix – Rosberg famously threw his baseball cap in his direction while sat in the warm down room.

In 2016, things got even worse, most notably at the Spanish Grand Prix when the two crashed into each other on the first lap.

In the season finale in Abu Dhabi that year, Hamilton controversially slowed Rosberg to boost his own chances of winning the title.