Jenson Button: 'I am not in Monaco to say goodbye. I am here to have fun'

Whether it is his bronzed, burnished glow, or the fact he is sporting an elaborate salmon-coloured watch only a long-time Monégasque would wear, Jenson Button looks as if he has never been away. 

Six months have passed since he bade poignant farewell to Formula One in Abu Dhabi, where his mother Simone shed a tear in the McLaren garage, and now he is back for more. “I’m not here to say goodbye,” he says, with his usual roguish grin. “I’m here to have fun.”

A peculiar set of circumstances has helped restore him to the fold. Button had grown weary of certain facets of F1 life – the remorseless travelling, coupled with his obligation, as a relatively tall driver, to eat like a sparrow to satisfy the sport’s strict weight limits – but one last spin around Monaco was an offer he could not refuse. 

When Fernando Alonso announced he would miss Sunday’s glittering showpiece in favour of a tilt at the Indianapolis 500, McLaren lined up, in Button, a ready-made swap: like for like, champion for champion.

Granted, Button might not be quite in the class of Alonso, a driver who more than any of this era pushes the parameters of what is possible in an F1 car. The Spaniard prevailed in one of the finest qualifying duels seen in Monte Carlo, against Kimi Raikkonen in 2005, and just last month he propelled a McLaren thought fit only for the breaker’s yard to seventh on the grid in Barcelona. Button, for all his qualities, has seldom shown the same pyrotechnics. Even in 2009, his triumphant season with Brawn, he did not achieve a victory beyond June, prompting one inquisitor to ask: “Jenson, do you actually want to win this title?”