Remembered: Jenson Button’s undisputed best F1 win ahead of racing retirement
Jenson Button takes in his final professional race this weekend, so we revisit one of his finest drives.
Jenson Button will be taking part in his final professional race at the weekend’s 8 Hours of Bahrain, and widespread tributes have been made to the 2009 F1 World Champion’s career.
Among them, however, we’re going to take a closer look at what we believe to be his best ever drive, and what sits rightly among the pantheon of the great Grands Prix of modern times.
2011 Canadian GP: Jenson Button wins a record-breaking race
Having stunned the form book with the famed ‘£1 racing team’ that was Brawn GP by winning the title in 2009, Button made the brave decision to form an all-British ‘superteam’ at McLaren in 2010, with Lewis Hamilton.
Perhaps the biggest indicator of Button’s performances in his three seasons as Hamilton’s teammate is that he out-scored the 2008 World Champion by 15 points, with those three years taken combined.
The two would make contact at a wet Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2011, however, which would go on to become the longest race in Formula 1 history (and will remain that way, if updated timing rules stay as they are).
A Safety Car start took place because of the rain, and the two McLarens traded places in the early stages, but when Hamilton looked for a way past Button on the pit straight, the two touched and Hamilton hit the wall – an incident almost mirrored exactly in dry conditions between the two current McLaren drivers in 2025.
Button took a drive-through penalty in what would be the second of six trips through the pit lane in Montreal, with World Championship leader Sebastian Vettel able to streak away largely untroubled, as he did for much of the 2011 season.
Falling to the back of the field even past the halfway point of the race, even getting points looked like it might be a long shot for the McLaren driver.
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However, given his capabilities of handling wet-to-dry conditions (first evidenced by a sterling drive at Indianapolis in his debut season in 2000), Button was able to make places while navigating tricky weather in Canada.
Pitting for the final time on lap 52 of 70, Button rejoined on slick tyres in 10th place, with 48 seconds to make up to the lead.
Vettel had been on flying form all season, and Michael Schumacher, back in Formula 1 with Mercedes, showed all his ‘rainmeister’ qualities to be running in second late on in the race.
With a dry line on track, though, despite all of his tyre changes, contact and penalties, Button was on a charge.
With others pitting ahead of him, Button was soon up to fourth, but still had 15 seconds to make up to Vettel in as many laps before the end of the race.
But when Nick Heidfeld ran into the back of Kamui Kobayashi at Turn 2, before leapfrogging his front wing and into the barriers, the Safety Car was out again, closing the field together.
Button was able to pass Mark Webber at the final chicane, with the Australian getting out of shape after attempting a pass on Schumacher, and the loss of momentum allowing the McLaren through.
He soon made light work of Schumacher, opening DRS on the back straight to get up to second with five laps remaining, clawing into Vettel’s advantage with every corner.
The 2010 World Champion had been seemingly unflappable all season, until the final lap in Montreal.
Button piled on the pressure starting the lap, sitting 0.6s behind and well within DRS range if needed.
With there still only being a single dry line, however, it would be Vettel who blinked first.
In the braking zone at Turn 6, he dipped two wheels onto a wet patch of asphalt, which sent the Red Bull driver into a half-spin, and Button was able to capitalise to take the lead in dramatic fashion.
That final half-lap was the only time Button led in the whole race, but he crossed the line first, four hours, four minutes and 39 seconds after the race began, having taken a record six trips through the pit lane in a record for a race winner, with a record six Safety Car periods to navigate, as well as an enormous rain delay while wet weather hit the circuit.
While this was just one of 15 career victories for the British driver, the unusual nature of the race, contact with his teammate and going from last to first cemented it as a highlight in an extremely successful career.
Life after Formula 1 for Jenson Button
Button had long said that he sees himself as a ‘racing driver’ rather than simply a ‘Formula 1 driver’, and that was put to the test in a variety of different categories after leaving Formula 1 in 2017.
He won another title in the competitive Japanese Super GT series in 2018, tried his hand in the World Endurance Championship in LMP1 machinery, sprinkling in appearances in DTM, Extreme E, rallycross, NASCAR, staying in sportscars with one-off IMSA appearances, before returning to WEC in Hypercars for the past two seasons.
Couple that with driving classic cars at meetings such as the Goodwood Revival, alongside a busy punditry career, those have all been contributors to the Briton choosing to step back from full-time driving at the end of 2025, to spend more time with his young family.
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