How to Be an F1 Driver

by Jenson Button

  In the end, we finished at about one in the morning, and the next day christened our 13 hours of drinking ‘Super Monday’, which went on to became a bit of a Monaco tradition, podium or not.

  Meanwhile, things have changed a bit. Back then there was a right crew – Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard to name but two – who all used to party after the race. Now it feels a little different. And while there are still some drivers painting the town various shades of red on a regular basis – don’t worry, I won’t tell your mum, Max – they’re the exception rather than the rule. A lot of them go home. It’s a very different atmosphere. We were like, Do your job, let off steam; they’re like, Do your job, go home. I wonder if it’s social media, your every move photographed, tweeted and tracked, which we didn’t have 20 years ago, thank God.

  As for me, I prefer restaurants these days. Parties? Nah. Nightclubs? Definitely not. Give me a good restaurant any day. Besides I can’t deal with the hangovers.

  2. THE MONEY

  Let’s talk about the wages. According to the 2019 Forbes list, Lewis is F1’s top earner with $55m in earnings and $10m in endorsements on top of that. Sebastian is behind him with $40.3m in earnings and $0.3m in endorsements, although both of them are some way behind the leader, some bloke called Lionel Messi, whose combined earnings is $127m.

  (Who, though, is the highest-paid sportsman of all time? Answer at the end of the chapter.)

  How Lewis and Sebastian’s cumulative earnings would stack up, I couldn’t say. Lewis is a five-time World Champion, Sebastian is only a four times World Champion. But Sebastian has been earning for longer. He won multiple World Championships at Red Bull and then he went to Ferrari for which he would have been paid a big lump sum.

  So that’s what you’ve got at the top end. But it’s not the case right the way through the grid, because at the bottom end there are probably six or more drivers in F1 who don’t get paid and instead have to bring money to the sport in order to compete. They will be paid through the sponsorship money they can generate.

  I’m not going to talk about my earnings. Suffice to say that when I arrived in F1, I was paid half-a-million dollars in my first year, and to say I was happy with that as a 20-year old from Somerset is the understatement of the millennium. The fact that it was my starting salary, and that, all being well, things were only going get better from there was exciting. It’s a huge, huge step-up, a real through-the-looking-glass moment, and it’s sobering (metaphorically, not literally); it increases your sense of responsibility, your sense of social guilt, you name it.

  Most of all it’s brilliant. Not just because of the amount, but also because you’re being paid so much for something you’d happily do for free. I swear to God that nobody comes into Formula One in the pursuit of fame and fortune. They might get it once they’re there, but that’s not the reason anyone embarks on this as a career. They do it because they love racing. And so when you’re one of the lucky few who reaches the top and you’re racing at the very pinnacle of the sport, and you’re being paid that much money for it – it’s just unreal.

  Like I say, my earnings increased. They peaked in 2006, 2007, 2008 – the Honda years – and then dipped at Brawn, when the team said, ‘We can’t pay you what your contract says,’ to which I replied, ‘Okay, but I want to go racing, and I think this car could be good, so I’ll take a pay cut.’

  So it’s big money, any way you look at it. And that’s before you factor in the bonuses. Some drivers will earn a $1m bonus if they win a race. Just one race. The funny thing, though, is that you don’t normally get a bonus for winning a Driver’s Championship. It’s the Constructor’s Championship that’s worth the big bucks because that’s when the team gets the large payout – €100 million or something – from the FIA, and you can buy a lot of team-branded polo shirts with that.

  It’s the same as it is in football, where players are paid more than the people who manage them, the inverse of just about every other situation in life. Someone like Lewis is not only the highest paid person in the team, but also probably the highest paid person in the whole of Daimler AG, Mercedes’ parent company. Even the CEO isn’t going to be on the kind of money Lewis gets paid.

  Still, you have to remember that the earning window is much smaller: for the first few years you have to prove yourself, after which you probably have ten years of earning good money and you could maybe push it for a few more years after that. And then? Well, you better find some other way of earning a crust.

  In my own case, having left McLaren in 2016, I could have gone to other teams and earned reasonable money, but it wasn’t about that; it was time to move away from the sport. Plus I knew that after F1, I could still earn money doing something. I just hadn’t yet figured out what.

  3. THE GLAMOUR

  When I watch Formula One, I watch the racing. But you’d need a heart of stone – or be Kimi Räikkönen – not to feel a little excitement at all the glamour and glitz of the whole thing. Of course you love the driving. We’re all there for that. But there’s all the other stuff that goes with it. It’s always in the back of your mind. I probably haven’t really considered it before, but as a kid the glamour of F1 must have attracted me on some level, because otherwise why aim for that, rather than another class of racing? I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

  It’s a particularly international sort of glamour, of course. Premiership footballers have the fast cars and the top clobber, but so do we, and what’s more, we have it in Monaco and Melbourne and Austria. When you walk into the paddock in Melbourne for the first race of the season it hits you what a wonderful environment you’re in, simply because it’s such a stunning paddock. Just seeing how much effort they put in to the hospitality and how luxurious it looks, how well everything is presented. It’s like, Whoa. You’ve got the top team at the near end: Mercedes, followed by Ferrari and then Red Bull (the further you have to walk down the paddock, the further down the ranking you are).

  I definitely enjoyed that, being a part of that scene. Just the look of it, for starters. Everything from the trailer to the garages is absolutely pristine. And the cars. I mean, you race in other categories and the vehicles are often a bit banged up with scratches, stone chips and such, but there’s not a mark, there’s not a thumb-print or a grease smear on an F1 car. They’re polished and buffed into flawless works of art, and because they’re painted for every race they look that good every single time.

  The whole thing about Formula One is that we put so much time and effort into the chase for perfection; everything is about detail, and as a result everything but everything, from the cars themselves to the teacups, looks a-mazing.

  I think that’s a huge part of the appeal. It’s that escapism. Life isn’t perfect, but Formula One is just about as close as we’re going to get. And of course we as drivers benefit enormously from that reflected glamour. Unlike footballers, we don’t have 20,000 people screaming rude things about our wives. I’ve got so much respect for football players in dealing with that aggression. I don’t know how they do it, I really don’t. And I hope I’m not tempting fate here, but in F1 we just haven’t seen the kind of financial and sexual scandals that have dogged, say, football and boxing. There are fewer F1 drivers, of course, but even so there does seem to be a general feeling of the drivers behaving themselves – or at least misbehaving a bit more successfully – than footballers.

  A lot of this is to do with the media. As a driver you’re in front of the cameras a lot. The first person they speak to after a race is not the team manager, it’s the driver, and you’ve got to be ready for that; you’ve got to understand that you’re not just talking on behalf of yourself but the other 500 other people in the team. As a result I think you grow up very quickly, become more respectful. And if you’re wondering how that fits in with this section’s theme of glamour, well, it just does, because it’s all about the global image of the sport, and upholding that image, and how we all do our bit towards it.

/>   4. THE SPONSORS (AKA MORE ‘THE MONEY’)

  In 1991, Alain Prost was turfed out of Ferrari halfway through a season for trash-talking his own team (he was also fired by Renault for the same reason at the end of the 1983 season). But aside from trash-talking, and getting truly appalling results, the other main reason you’re likely to get your marching orders is if you upset a sponsor.

  The thing is, it’s not easy for any team in Formula One to exist; it costs a fortune – $200–$400 million a year – so if it came to a choice between the sponsor and the driver, then the team would get rid of the driver.

  But it just doesn’t happen now because everyone in Formula One knows on which side their bread is buttered. In other words, they’re wise to the fact that the sponsors put money into the team, which in very real terms means the team can build a better, faster car, which in turn gives you a better chance of winning. The team can pay for the best drivers – not just the two up front, but better test drivers, too – they can pay for the better staff; they can spend more money on a wind tunnel. It’s no coincidence that the two richest teams in F1, Mercedes and Ferrari, are also the two quickest teams in Formula One.

  So in a very real sense you as the driver can use the sponsor – or, rather, the sponsorship situation – to your advantage. You understand that the sponsor wants you there. That you’re integral to their interests in the team, and that if they liked another driver more then they’d probably sponsor that team instead. You being able to understand how the cogs of team, sponsor and driver interlink and that for it all to work you all have to be doing your job properly. Ultimately, the way a driver deals with the sponsor will be a key part of his longevity in the sport.

  Am I good at it? Damn straight I am. I realised quite early on that it’s important to be good in every area and schmoozing sponsors is definitely one of them. Plus I really enjoyed it because the people I was meeting were genuinely interested in Formula One. I’d always try not to ask boring questions. I would ask things about driving, put them on the spot a little bit, make them a little bit uncomfortable, and they loved it; I’d start a conversation as a friend would; it wouldn’t be just like, ‘Yeah, it’s great to be here this weekend blah blah blah,’ and all the boring stuff that you have to say. I’d try and make it a bit more personal, hopefully get the crowd laughing, take the piss out of myself or take the piss out of the marketing people I’m with, get a rise out of people. And I think that makes a difference, because they remember you; it’s not just, ‘Oh, some Formula One driver came in and did a little speech.’ It’s different, more personal.

  Mind you, as a tactic it backfired a bit. Other drivers would turn up to sponsor events, be a bit distant and disinterested, do the guppy fish impression, and so the sponsor would ask for me next time, and I’d end up doing the lion’s share.

  It’s the same with the media. I used to like having a laugh with the press, or at least having a laugh because of the press.

  There was this one time, not at band camp – 2014, it was – when we were struggling with the car and my PR man, James Williamson, would get me to say certain words in my answer. It was just to amuse ourselves, really. We loved the Cookie Monster advert, where the Cookie Monster kept saying, ‘How about now?’ as he’s waiting for the cookies to be ready. He keeps saying it. ‘How about now? How about now?’

  So there I was in a press conference in Canada, getting really cheesed off with the same old question, and in the end I said, ‘This is really tough, you know, you keep asking me the same question about when is the performance going to get better, you keep saying, how about now? How about now? How about now?’ And I kind of framed it as though I was losing my rag when unbeknown to anyone (apart from James, who I could hear laughing into his hand) it was just me doing a Cookie Monster impression.

  Meanwhile, I was always taught when doing an interview to end on a positive, because that’s what they remember. On one occasion in Montreal we were speaking to various McLaren highups, and I was being interviewed on stage by one of the team members. So the first thing I did was to take the piss out of the team member interviewing me. I went on to talk about how shit the day was and then I ended on a high: ‘But tomorrow, I’m sure it’s going to be fantastic with your support,’ and just left them with a bit of positivity.

  Did I ever get sick of being a walking sponsorship board? Yes and no. When you’re paid that kind of money you should wear a diarrhoea-coloured frilly tutu if that’s what they want. Yes, you have lots of demands on you and your time, and it’s certainly not what you’d call an easy life. But it’s so well remunerated that all other considerations have to come second. And after all, you always have the option to step aside if it all gets too much.

  But on the other hand, maybe I did feel a little… owned. I was often aware that we were being used every second of our lives. Like if the public see you wearing a watch that isn’t a sponsor’s watch, they’ll say, ‘Hang on a sec, why is he wearing that watch and not the sponsor’s watch?’ and the sponsors will be, ‘Shit, this is an issue. He prefers that other watch,’ and before you know it you’ll have people on the phone treating it like a major diplomatic incident when the fact is you just picked up the wrong watch on your way out to fetch a coffee.

  Same if I was papped somewhere and I was in a BMW when I drove for Honda. I wouldn’t go back to the car. I’d leave it until I knew that the paps had gone.

  Still, whatever I’m advertising, I try my best to do it well, even if I know it’s shit. You couldn’t refuse to be sponsored, as such, but I would say to the team that I’m not doing certain things, and in my contract there are some things that I will and won’t do.

  For example, the sponsor can’t use me and just me; they had to have the car in the background and had to have a racing element to the photo they use for advertising. Little details like that. So it wasn’t solely me as an individual sponsoring a brand that I might not want to associate myself with.

  For Honda I’m an ambassador, which means I do ‘ambassadorial’ things for them. Again, there’s a line. Like if they wanted me to frolic on a beach with buxom beauties or something equally crass I could refuse. But I also know that they wouldn’t do that because Honda is a brand that is very respectful, so it’s good working with them.

  I went to Australia to do a one-day, which was just about the most fun sponsor event ever. They flew me out there, I drove a Civic-type car around Bathurst, which is a beautiful circuit up in the mountains. All I had to do was set the lap record for a front-wheel-drive road car, one that hadn’t been set yet. So I just went out and had fun, had a few beers in the evening and came home, and that was it.

  Compare that to 2010, the first year of McLaren – or ‘Vodafone McLaren Mercedes’ as the press kit had me say – when I’d come from Brawn to join Lewis. McLaren had the previous two World Champions racing as teammates, and boy were they going to make the most of it. They used us every day on sponsor events. Race weekends were packed with photo-ops; they were pulling us out of engineering meetings to do sponsor events. We were like, ‘Guys, we understand the need to do marketing and interviews, but our priority is making the car go faster.’

  Lewis was lucky, because my manager, Richard, did all the fighting on behalf of us both, and it remains the only time I’ve ever complained about too much work in F1. Marketing listened, of course, and as result scaled the promotional appearances right back.

  For about, oh, a fortnight.

  5. THE SPENDING

  Coming into F1, I had no idea what I was doing, especially when it came to money, and my manager at the time, a thoroughly lovely bloke, if a little green, said, ‘It’s fine, you’ve got a long career ahead of you, spend it!’

  I’m not blaming him. He was himself a multi-millionaire businessman. He just wanted me to be happy and I was all too willing to take his advice. So I bought a house as well as the expensive apartment I was renting in Monaco, and I also bought…

  Cars and motorhomes

&nb
sp; The trick is to buy a limited car – but don’t sell it right away. You get people who buy and sell them straight away but Ferrari and other manufacturers don’t like it when you do that, so you’re probably not going to get your hands on a limited-edition Ferrari ever again. On the other hand, it’s the people who buy and sell instantly who tend to make the most money on them.

  One thing I do know, however, is that the richest man is the one who buys a Ferrari that’s not limited. You buy a Ferrari that’s not limited, you drive it out off the forecourt and it’s dropped $50,000 already and that’s the richest man in the world who does that – who doesn’t care about losing that money. Whereas I will only buy a car if I know it’s a limited car, because I’ll hold on to my money.

  Other things I spent a lot of money on: a motorhome. Argh! I remember the conversation with Richard. I said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this any longer,’ and he was, like, ‘Well, why don’t you try making it as easy on yourself as possible? Get rid of some of your peripheral worries so that you can relax and stay focused on the race…’

  He would be proved correct. Although I’ve bought a lot of things that have cost me a small fortune, mostly they were all about making my life easier so that I could continue in Formula One for longer.

  My motorhome (in the end, motorhomes, plural) was a prime example. It felt like home. I’d get back from the circuit, whether it was a good day or a bad day, walk in and be like, ‘Ah, a restful oasis away from the circus of Formula One.’ I’d open the fridge and gaze upon my Babybels (my beloved Babybels) as well as all the rest of my food. I had my kettle, my bed…