Of course it’s got a bed, you’re thinking. What sort of shonky motorhome doesn’t have a bed? But the point is that it was my bed. When you stay in a hotel, not only do you play a bed version of Russian roulette – because even the best hotels can have shit beds – but it also takes a while to get used to what you’ve got. Even if it’s a great bed it’s still a couple of nights before you’ve adjusted to it and start getting proper restful sleep.
Having a motorhome meant I no longer had the bed problem. In fact, it meant I no longer had hotel issues at all. I could only use it for European races, but that was ideal, because a lot of European hotels were a bit on the average side and were situated a bit too near the circuit, meaning you’d often get fans and media hanging around outside.
My motorhome, on the other hand, with its Babybels and its comfortable, familiar bed, was always parked somewhere secret. They weren’t allowed in the circuit so we had to find somewhere else to park nearby – although I say ‘we’, when, happily, it wasn’t my problem to find out where the motorhome should go. I had a driver. My driver would be driving the motorhome across Europe as I flew. Then at the race he’d get a hotel as I stayed in the motorhome. A great arrangement, but, of course, expensive. You’re paying for your flights, you’re paying for getting the motorhome to the races, you’re paying for staying in the motorhome, because you have to pay for security, you have to pay for where it’s parked, and you’re paying for the driver’s hotel as well.
So the cost was just unreal every race. And that’s on top of the price of the motorhome, which for a top-of-the-range Newell, who are one of the best people who make motorhomes, could be $1m, $1.5m.
At Brawn, it was myself and my teammate, Rubens Barrichello, who both had the same type of motorhome, the aforementioned Newell. Sebastian had one. Fernando had one. Nico Rosberg had one. Lewis has (or had) a truck, which was bigger inside, but not as luxurious, very contemporary. I didn’t like it – it didn’t feel like home. Cool, but not to my taste. So that was probably six or seven of us who had motorhomes, and so we all clubbed together to pay for a ‘motorhome guy’ who would make sure our motorhomes were clean and that they were stocked with Babybels and that the bed was set up at night so you didn’t have to do it yourself. I ask you. Talk about pampered.
During testing, the circuit relaxed its rules on having motorhomes so you could have it in the paddock, which meant you could cross from the garage, across the paddock and go straight into your motorhome. So cool.
The first one I had used to belong to Mika Salo, and Jacques Villeneuve before him. It had a leopard-skin print theme running through the interior and looked a bit like a gin palace, which was no doubt what had enchanted both Mika and Jacques. Apart from a weird sink-next-to-the-bed bit of negative feng shui it was great, but even so, the time came to trade up.
My next one used to belong to the NASCAR driver Jimmy Johnson and was 45 feet long, just about as big as you can get. In fact, it was so big that it was illegal to register it in the UK, so I had to register it in Ireland. It had a lounge area, kitchen in the middle, bedrooms at the back.
There’s so much that can go wrong with them. Even more than with a boat, which is surprising. A lot of them have hydraulic pull-outs to make the rooms bigger, only they go wrong and then water comes in and you get mould. The shower will pack up. You’ll fix that and something else will break. You’re throwing money away like a man with three arms.
I sold it after I finished in F1. I bought it for $400,000 and sold it for $130,000. Lovely thing to have, but I must say I breathed a sigh of relief when it was gone.
Yachts
I bought a boat I couldn’t afford. I earned half a million dollars a year and it cost £800,000, so I was immediately in debt.
Yachts, you probably don’t need me to tell you, are expensive to buy and they’re expensive to run. Mine was moored at Monaco harbour, which isn’t cheap, plus you need to employ a captain to live on it, keep everything – yes – shipshape, and tell you when you need a new engine, which I did at one point. Again: not cheap. This guy would never see me. Three weeks a year I was on that boat, at most, and I ended up chartering it out because I just couldn’t afford to run it, what with paying for him, the repairs, harbour fees and, oh, God, fuel – fuel is unbelievably expensive. I remember when I picked up my first boat, Little Missy, in 2001, I invited my mates from Frome over for a holiday and one day they said, ‘Right, JB, today we’re going to pay for the fuel for the boat.’
I was, like, ‘No, it’s okay, it’s fine, it’s fine.’
‘No, no we’re going to sort it out.’
I was, like, ‘Guys, seriously, you don’t have to…’
They said, ‘Come on, come on. How much is it going to be?’
I said, ‘Two and a half grand to fill it up.’
‘Okay,’ they said, ‘How about we, sort of, pay a bit towards it? Like, a hundred pounds...’
In all, the yacht was costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
And I ended up buying two.
Little Missy was 20 metres. I got rid of that one and bought a new one, Ichiban, in 2014. That one cost £5,000–£6,000 to fill up with fuel and was 28 metres long, which isn’t all that big when you consider that back in the day Eddie Irvine had a 100-foot boat; Jacques Villeneuve’s was 145-foot.
Someone will always have a bigger boat, that’s what they say. It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got and how much money you spend on a yacht, someone will always have a bigger one. They also say that the best boat is your mate’s boat, and that’s just as true.
Still, it was really stunning, that second boat: Ichiban. It had four bedrooms, slept eight people. We took it to Sardinia, Corsica, the Italian coast, the French Riviera, sailed it down the coast to St-Tropez.
The living area had a sheer glass wall giving you a beautiful view of the ocean, and as for stocking it, we filled it full of alcohol, lots of rosé. That was our drink of choice. Rosé and beer were the must-haves on the boat. I had a chef, who was amazing. She’d be on the boat six months of the year, along with the captain and a first mate. I’m not sure what they were all doing – cleaning, I suppose, and taking out the jet ski and paddle board to make sure they were in working order. Enjoying the luxury of yacht life in Monaco, knowing that I was paying them to do it. Oh God.
At least I could be certain they weren’t having wild parties on my dollar. My captain kept a tight ship. Nobody was allowed to get near the boat if they were smoking a cigarette. Even my friends, if they had a cigarette, he’d be cross with them. He was in his forties, while the rest of the crew were in their twenties and he ruled over them with the proverbial rod of iron.
Mainly, I loved it and had some great times on it. The trouble is that however much fun you’re having, you’re super-aware of the sheer amount of money you’re throwing away. They say it’s like having a bag of cash and the whole time you’re on the boat, chucking $100 bills into the ocean, and it’s true. But I enjoyed it and I loved being on the water. Yes, I probably should have just chartered a boat when I fancied it. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Planes
Confession: this bit’s a cheat, because I didn’t actually buy a plane. Thank God. Back in the day, people were spending a fortune on them. It was the proper glitzy, glamorous lifestyle of an F1 playboy: planes, cars and boats. Rubens Barrichello had one, Michael Schumacher, Eddie Irvine. Lewis had one for years but sold it. Why? Surprise, surprise, it turns out that you’re throwing money away when you own a plane. Worse even than boats.
Just for starters, if you’re going to buy a new one and you want it capable of making transatlantic flights – which of course you would if you’re a Formula One driver – it’s going to cost you $20 million plus, and it’ll be no comfier than flying first class. Then you need a crew. Then you have airport fees, and of course the dreaded aviation fuel. Plus, if you own a plane you’re going to have to service it, and when you’re servicing it for those
three or four weeks, you’re going to have to rent another plane.
All of which means that if you have to fly private then it’s better to rent, and what a lot of drivers ended up doing was clubbing together to rent a private jet so it cost us less.
We’d fly to Russia on a 14-seater jet and share the cost, which would be about £4,000 each. It’s a pretty good way to travel, because you’re not queuing up, and if you take a nap you haven’t got people gawping at you while you’re asleep, which has always struck me as a bit unsettling when I’m flying. Like, what if I start drooling, or do one of those weird sleep-spasms when I’m drifting off?
Saying that, the interior of a private jet – or a PJ as we call them, being simply too spoiled to say the words out in full – isn’t actually that grand. Not unless you get a really big one. A lot of people will climb aboard a private jet and go, ‘God, it’s so small in here,’ possibly because they hadn’t been paying attention when they took a look from the outside, or were maybe expecting a TARDIS-like interior. Get a load of racing drivers onboard, all of whom are in an over-caffeinated state, either because they’re excited about the race ahead or excited about a week away from the circus, and things can even start to feel a little bit cramped, not to mention a bit farty. Like a lot of things, it’s often better in theory than it is in reality.
6. THE TRAVEL
Travelling is glamorous. Even though it isn’t, because it’s long and tiring and boring, it sort of is anyway. Just is. And as drivers we don’t take it for granted, because we know we’re doing cool stuff that most people will never get to experience. Going to Australia once a year is awesome, for example. And then you go to Japan, wicked. And then Brazil. A lot of these countries I never would have thought about going to it, if I wasn’t racing in F1.
Travel Tips From The Long-Haul Expert
Airlines
These days. I do plenty of flying to Japan plus to the Grand Prix for my work with Sky. In all I do close to 16 long-haul flights a year. I fly business, not first class, and although I fly with all sorts of airlines, I’ve definitely got it down to the best ones now, and weirdly enough, considering that they’re usually on the end of a bad-PR story and it’s difficult to find someone with a good word to say about them, Delta is the best airline if you’re flying to Japan.
For a start, it’s a brand-new plane, the Airbus 350. Now, all planes fly the same ‘actual’ altitude, around 31,000 feet, but internally they don’t, of course; they’re pressurised to a lower altitude. And while most normal planes are internally pressurised to 6,000 feet, an A350 flies at about 4,500 feet internally, which means the passengers get less tired. As a result, I really do feel less fatigued when I get off an Airbus 350.
And Delta’s the only company that fly them and they’re brand new inside. Plus in business class, you get a door, so it’s proper fun. It’s like a little suite.
Don’t take luggage
I never take anything, except hand luggage, so I save up to an hour checking in luggage at one end and then collecting it at the other end. Bo-ho-nus.
Check in online
And you can check in online, so you can arrive less than an hour before the flight leaves and still be on time. All that stuff about making sure you’re at the airport three hours before your flight? Pah.
Get on ‘local’ time
As soon as you arrive on the plane, you should already be thinking of yourself as being at your destination. So if you get on a plane in LA and it’s 1pm, you should already think that you’re on Japanese time, which is 16 hours in front, thus it’s five in the morning there, and you should sleep and eat accordingly.
So, if I get on the plane at 1pm, I try to sleep immediately and then after about six hours, wake up, because then it will be 11am in Japan. Literally, I get on the plane and that’s it. Everyone’s eating and I’m earplugs in, eye mask on, getting some shut-eye.
There are certain flights out of LA that work and some flights that don’t. Some flights take off at midnight, others at 10 in the morning, but the midnight flights are better because I arrive in Japan at 5am and I’ve slept for a whole night.
Be a mathematician about it
Japan is 16 hours ahead of me in Los Angeles, so to work it out I move the current time forward one day and then move it back eight hours. Coming back is weird, because I take a midnight flight after the race on Sunday and arrive home at 5pm on Sunday. Marty McFly has nothing on me.
But don’t think about the time back home
The thing is, my body now knows LA as ‘home’ and lets me get straight back on my home time zone quickly. So coming this way is not too bad.
Going the other way – out to Japan – however, is really tough, and I’ve found the best if not only policy is just not to think about the fact that if I want to go to Japan I lose two days of my life. Just gone, just like that.
Take Melatonin
Don’t look so alarmed. Melatonin is what you produce when you’re tired. So it’s all natural and all you’re doing by taking a supplement is adding to it a little bit. Just giving it a wee boost. I normally take 5mg. I always take it when I travel. And I take it as soon as I get on board. It takes 15 minutes to work, and it’s a nice sleep, because you don’t wake up groggy. Just helps you drift off.
Don’t drink to excess
They say you shouldn’t drink at all, but I find it’s nice to have that little glass of red. I’ll probably have it in the lounge before I get on board, though. Don’t tell anyone.
Keep yourself busy
If, like me, you’re on your own from when you leave home until you arrive at your destination, you’ll want something to do en route: a film to watch, a book or a couple of magazines to read. Whatever you do, make it an activity that’s absorbing but not too demanding. Something you know will keep you occupied for long hours on end. Personally, I’m a big one for watching a box set on my laptop.
Sleep
Once you’ve found the right bed, hold onto it tight. Don’t let it go. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo and I love their beds and pillows, so every time I land in Japan, I stay there for the night before we go off to the race.
Late last year, I had some flowers and a letter from them that said, ‘Congratulations, Mr Button, you’ve stayed with us 50 times,’ which was nice. I’ve probably stayed with them about 80 times now, which has got me wondering what’ll happen when I get to 100.
7. OFF-SEASON
Generally speaking, drivers go their own way during the offseason. You never hang out with a racing driver in the winter. Daniel Ricciardo would go home to Australia, Lewis would go to LA; me, I used to go to Hawaii on holiday, because it was the only break I really had throughout the year.
During the mid-season break I’d go to either Ibiza or St-Tropez for two weeks, and I remember that being weird, because I’d feel fine and then at the end of the break, like literally the last day of the holiday I’d be all blocked up, get a cold and be poorly for another week leading up to the next race. That probably happened for about two years on the trot, before I was like, ‘Hey, guys, maybe we’ll go to St-Tropez for one week, not two.’
Hawaii, then, in the off-season. Apart from relaxing I’d do a lot of fitness training. Every year you’d get a little bit fitter and do a little bit more, and for me, the perfect place to do that was Hawaii. I’d train in the morning and most afternoons, spend the rest of the day lazing around, have a few drinks and then get back to training the next day.
Being in Hawaii meant that I missed Christmas with the family, but I think they understood that I needed time to relax and get away from the world of motor racing. Well, they said they understood. I don’t know if they really did. I haven’t asked them since. I know my mum missed me not being there, but I’ve made up for it, because in the last few years, since I’ve been with Brit, we go home every year to see everyone and it’s really, really nice to have a big family affair. Just brilliant to see my three sisters, and all of their kids
. It’s a massive get-together.
After off-season, I would always struggle to get back in the car. After a winter of living a different kind of life – a more relaxing, me-time sort of life, it took time. But as soon as I got back in the groove I could think about nothing else. I was a man obsessed. I couldn’t switch off. Again, it was another reason I ended up pulling the plug for good.
The highest-paid sportsmen of all time, by the way, is Gaius Appuleius Diocles, a Roman chariot racer who earned 35,863,120 sesterces, which when adjusted for inflation amounts to well over $15 billion.
DOING THE JOB
Racecraft is the basis of all racing. It’s how to overtake, how to brake, how to position your car correctly when you’re fighting for position; it’s about understanding racing lines and using your skill and instinct to find the quickest way around a circuit.
It’s also about dealing with the extra stuff that gets thrown at you. Like the weather doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. Or maybe the car you’re driving doesn’t suit your style and you need to change up – in which case, you either adapt your style of racing to suit the car, or adapt the car to suit your racing style.
My driving style is, in a word, smooth. I try to drive as though I’m racing a 60cc go-kart. I like to brake and carry speed through a corner; I like to judge the racing line. Precision. That’s what it’s all about for me. I began that way in karting and – with a bit of necessary fine-tuning – carried it through to F1. I like to think I continue it now in Super GT.
How to Be an F1 Driver Page 6