Jenson Button tips fellow Briton George Russell to win F1 world c’ship in future

SINGAPORE – Since his debut with Williams in 2019, George Russell has been touted as the next big thing in Formula One, and the 25-year-old has matched his older teammate, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, drive for drive since moving to Mercedes in 2022.

His accomplishments in the hot seat has had former world champion Jenson Button tipping his compatriot to win a world title in the future.

Despite the 13-year age gap between the duo, Russell finished 35 points ahead of Hamilton in the drivers’ standings in 2022 and also claimed the team’s only win of the season at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

In 2023, Hamilton, 38, has finished ahead of Russell 11 times in 15 races while Russell has outperformed Hamilton 8-7 in qualifying, including

getting to P2 in Singapore.

However, the latter crashed out in the final lap of

the Formula One Singapore Airlines Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday.

When asked by The Straits Times if Russell could win a world title, Button, 43, who is in Singapore as a speaker at the TIME100 Impact Awards, said: “Yes. If he’s in the right team, then definitely. I don’t think he’d be afraid of going up against anyone.

“He is teammates with Lewis who is one of the toughest guys to have as a teammate and he’s done well. He has every opportunity of fighting for a world championship.”

Button has seen first-hand Russell’s work ethic.

In 2021, Button was appointed senior adviser at Williams, where he worked with the team’s drivers.

Button said: “He’s a good character and he works really hard. He’ll have engineering meetings about engineering meetings.

“And to go up alongside someone like Lewis and to push him as hard as he has this year and last year, it really does show his talent despite the very little experience he has compared to Lewis.”

Button also had praise for another Briton on the grid, McLaren’s 23-year old Lando Norris – who finished second on Sunday – and described him as a “super talent”.

While the likes of Norris and Russell are in the early years of their Formula One careers, Button spent 16 years racing for teams such as Williams, Benetton, Renault, BAR, Honda, Brawn and McLaren, winning 15 races and reaching the podium on 50 occasions.

But critics have also labelled Button, who won the 2009 world title with Brawn, and Mercedes’ 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg “one-hit wonders” for not winning more crowns.

Button said: “When you start out as a kid, you don’t aim to win multiple world championships, you aim to be a world champion. That was my aim, and in F1, to win a Grand Prix is difficult enough. And then you got to string it all together over one season, and be consistent and beat your teammate.

“You got to have the right mindset of giving everything to the sport. And that’s why I left Formula One, because it just took so much from me.

“You put so much effort in and you’ve got nothing left for anything else. So for me leaving was a breath of fresh air.”

While Button hung up his racing gloves at the end of 2016 aged 36 – although he made a one-off appearance at the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix to replace Fernando Alonso – he has tipped Hamilton to continue in the sport till his 40s.

Button, who was Hamilton’s teammate at McLaren from 2010 to 2012, said: “I don’t see him leaving any time soon.

“I’m amazed by how many years he’s done in the sport, but then he’s also been in a car that’s given him the opportunity to win for so many years, and most of us don’t get that.”

Button, who competed in nine editions of the Singapore Grand Prix, was able to spend time away from the racetrack this time.

While in Singapore, he explored the Keong Saik area and got a taste of popular local zi char restaurant Kok Sen, where he had seafood hor fun, prawn paste chicken, prawn noodles, poached Chinese spinach with century eggs, among other dishes. He even had his first taste of durian, which he described as something that will “haunt me for the rest of my life”.