Jenson Button is the most OVERRATED Champion of ALL TIME!
Yes, I am an asshole, I'm a glass half empty kind of guy and if you have a problem with it, go on and get stuffed..... wait, stop, come back! Listen, I'll pull out the stats, like your mum pulls out her tits and go through all the reasons why Jenson Button is the luckiest and most overrated Champion of all time.
For those that don't know Ross Brawn brought in his own team for the 2009 season, essentially Honda pulled the plug due to the global financial crisis that was going on. He paid a shit load for it too, £1. Brawn GP was formed on 6 March 2009 when it was confirmed that Ross Brawn, the former technical director for the Honda Racing F1 Team, Ferrari and Benneton teams, had bought the team from Honda for £1 in the wake of their departure.
So Brawn bought the team, named it after himself and they rock up to the first race in the season as the only team that have sorted out the double diffuser and with Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello at the helm it was really a question of did they get it right.
Button was even lucky to get a fucking drive there, do you know what his record was in 2008? oh, you don't? His 2008 record must've been incredible. 18 races, 1 points finish, finishing 18th in the championship. WOW, ok, so it was a case of pure luck that he was in the right place at the right time. He stumbles and falls ass backwards into the best car for 2009.
So let's talk about that 2009 season. Brawn worked out the double diffuser, so surely that's 17 wins in that year, or at least 17 podiums. But Button certainly did start out strong. Since they were the only car to have the DD sorted, and Buttons teammate was man that enjoyed playing second fiddle so much, they call him second fiddle Barrichello, it's true. Rubens Barrichello wasn't going to step on Buttons toes, he was going to go to one side and let him have it.
So 7 rounds into the season Button had won 6 of the first 7 races with a podium in China in round 3. What a start, Ross Brawn is a genius, Button is a lucky son of a bitch. Because now, the other teams have caught on, they've modified their double diffusers and have them working just right, or at least good enough to compete. You want to know the results for the rest of the 2009 season? 10 races left, he got two podiums, 7 points finishes and a retirement. He didn't win another fucking race.
The end result was Button won the championship with 95 points and Seb Vettel came second with 84, if the season was 1 or 2 races longer, Sebastian Vettel is a 5 time World Champion. Because of a 7 race stretch for Button he was able to crawl across the line and get himself a championship and he owes it to Ross Brawn, because he had no business being there. He had 66 of his 95 points in the first 7 races, Seb had 29.
Yes there is luck involved in any championship winning season, but for you to be 18th of 22 drivers, then your team becomes the best team, but for only a short amount time just proves you had LITERALLY NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!
We often ask the questions, if you stick so and so in that car, would they win? If you take the worst driver on the grid now, say Nicholas Latifi and stick him in Charles Leclerc's Ferrari, how would he go? might take him one or two races, but he would be up there. Don't get it twisted, I think Leclerc is a far better driver than Latifi, I'm saying that it's fucking important to have a half decent car to drive. We know Big Dick Danny Ric can drive, we know Lewis Hamilton can drive, but if the car is rubbish, they don't stand a chance at winning a race and we are seeing that this season.
So to do a fair comparison, I've looked at Formula 1 World Champions that have only won 1 championship since 1990 and what I plan on doing is looking at how well they've succeeded for their entire career, whether or not they've been consistently good, or just had one outstanding season that got them a championship.
Max Verstappen - 2021 - the man has less than half the amount of entries in formula 1 and already has 8 more career wins, so yea, no brainer here. Button worst than Verstappen.
Nico Rosberg - 2016 - in 100 less starts have 8 more wins, also his team mate was Sir Lewis Hamilton, arguably the greatest driver the sport has seen. A bit more of a competition than what Rubens Barrichello was.
Kimi Räikkönen - 2007 - Now Kimi raced in more races, in around 50 more than Button, but he also had more wins, 6 more wins, his win percentage is higher and just going off the eye test, just watching what Kimi was doing in the mid 00's was just insane. He was blisteringly quick. I think it's safe to say Kimi was better than Button also.
Jacques Villeneuve - 1997 - He only got 11 wins to his name, 4 less than Button, HOWEVER he did it in half the races.
Damon Hill - 1996, Damon has 22 wins to his name 7 more than Button and he did it in only 122 race starts, whereas Button needed his 306 race starts to get to 15 wins.
And finally Nigel Mansell - 1992 - 31 wins in 196 starts, and the mother fucker had his own video game.
Look, what I'm saying with all this is we need to acknowledge that Jenson Button is the luckiest son of a bitch in F1 history. He has a Drivers World Championship, because Ross Brawn is a genius and Jenson Button was in the right place at the right time. The stats prove that once other teams copied Brawn successfully Jenson Button was a mid field driver AT BEST!
I know this is going to piss a lot of people off and to be honest, I don't care. I just hate how much the media and fans alike want to ride Buttons dick like he is an all time great, when in reality, he is the WORST FORMULA 1 WORLD CHAMPION EVER. In fact there are quite a few drivers that never won a championship that I would rate a lot higher than Jenson Button.
Sir Stirling Moss, more wins, 16, in 66 starts. To be fair, Sir Stirling Moss was better than most championship winners, it was purely a case of wrong time and place for the man.
But that's it, that's my thoughts. When you look at the numbers it's quite clear that I'm right. We just need to start recognising that and stop looking at him as some Grand Champion of the sport.