How Jenson Button led half a lap and won – the 2011 Canadian GP

“Eventually, other drivers began to realize that. You began to see ‘Jenson’s gone for inters’ [so] everyone’s bundling in for inters now or ‘Jenson thinks it’s wet enough that the full wet will be quicker than the inter now’, everyone’s going to dive into the pits.

“People would follow suit in that way, by copying Jenson’s wisdom. More than I’ve seen them do any other driver ever really.”

Lap 19 and Button got past Petrov for seventh, but then another deluge moved in. TV shots show almost zero visibility at the final hairpin, cars only coming in view at the last moment.

Not for the first time, the McLaren was quicker than most to react and came in for full wets again.

Button was looking to make his sixth-sense count once more, but it soon all came to a halt when conditions were decided to be too foul to race in.

As the cars came in, Bishop had a minefield of a PR situation on his hands.

“I remember realising that we were going to have to do interviews, which was a unique situation, halfway through a Grand Prix, to have media scrums with Jenson being interviewed by one lot of journalists and Lewis being interviewed by another.

“We had the issue of knowing that at that point the question they would be asked was ‘Your team-mate shunted you, what do you think?’”

In a bid to maintain team harmony, Bishop deployed a couple of white lies.

“I did a little bit of sleight of hand at that point and said to Lewis ‘We’re going to have to do interviews now, you’ll be asked about the shunt. I’ve already spoken to Jenson. He doesn’t blame you at all.’

“Then I went to Jenson and told him vice versa about Lewis.

“As a result, they spoke in a very kind of measured and statesman-like way really considering that they have had the shunt with their team-mate!”

The drivers might have been placated and eventually so was the weather, meaning that two hours and four minutes later the cars headed for the race to get back underway.

After completing eight more circuits behind the safety sar, the was field off the leash on lap 34.

“Jenson would ask questions on the radio which sometimes astounded us”

Down in 10th, Jenson disposed of Pedro de la Rosa before electing to make yet another stop, the track being dry enough now for intermediate tyres.

It was a brave move when the car was running well on its current rubber, but Bishop wasn’t surprised.

“He had a mental bandwidth available — just a bit, but enough — in order to think more analytically about what he was doing.

“Jenson would ask questions on the radio which sometimes astounded us. ‘I’ve just passed the big screen. Looks like Massa is on inters. Can you tell me why? And when he went on them?’ You’d think ‘What are you talking about? How can you do that?’ Let me tell you, very few drivers can do that.”

With the race only 50% run, the McLaren driver had already made four pitstops.

Jenson was yet again down the mine, now in 15th but that didn’t last the out-lap. He immediately progressed by passing Sutil and Caterham’s’s Jarno Trulli in one corner when negotiating the hairpin.

Further pitstops rivals brought Jenson up to 11th, but also into the wake of Fernando Alonso.

As the Spaniard exited the pits on cold tyres, Jenson spied an opportunity to get ahead.

The Brit put his car up the inside of the Ferrari at the first chicane, but Alonso made the decision to turn in all the same.

The pair connected and the Ferrari was spun round. Button had a front-right puncture and broken front wing, whilst Alonso was beached and out of the race.

Halfway through the race and Button had already taken out two world champions.

The McLaren was dragged round once more to make its fifth visit to the pits. Button was dead last – he had it all to do again.

Once again, he benefitted from the safety car, which funnelled up the field in front of current wooden spoon holder Button, as Alonso’s stranded Ferrari was recovered.

And because Button was so far behind the safety-car led pack when he came out of the pits, he was able to get his tyres up to temperature by catching them up, proving massively useful when the race started again.

When the field was unleashed lap 41, the Brit wasted no time in getting past Vitantonio Liuzzi.

JB took two cars on the next lap, then swept past three more on the one after. Despite all his travails, the McLaren was now hooked up and scything through the field.

The Sauber of De la Rosa was his next victim on lap 44 before Sébastien Buemi was taken on the following tour. A Sutil pitstop promoted Button further, and a mistake by Jaime Alguersuari unblocked Button who had followed the Toro Rosso for four laps. The Brit was now back in the points.

“Button was now on a searing pace”

Lap 51 and Button spotted Webber, with new slicks, had immediately set a purple sector. The McLaren man made his final crucial choice to follow suit. Such had been his speed in moving through the field prior to his stop, he only lost two places, emerging 10th.

Pedro De la Rosa and Nico Rosberg then pitted, before Felipe Massa risked too much on a wet line to put his Ferrari into the wall. With 17 laps left, Button was now seventh.

Bishop had decamped to the paddock with McLaren team boss Ron Dennis to watch the rest of the race, the pair realising that something momentous was unfolding before them:

“Jenson began to do what he did, which is to ‘optimise’ – that’s a Ron word, isn’t it? – changeable conditions in a way that no driver I’ve worked with was able to emulate in quite the same way.”

“It became clear he was overtaking people. Quite a few people!”

As well as overtaking, his quick-thinking meant that others, reacting slower, fell behind as they made their pitstops. Button was on a searing pace, now setting fastest lap at 1min 22.759sec on lap 54.

As Button recalled “This is the only way I was going to win the race, by putting him under pressure like this and making him push that car to the maximum.”

Time was running out though. By the final circuit, the McLaren driver had just about closed in enough on Vettel to have a chance of an overtake. The memory of these final moments is still strong for Bishop:

“I can’t talk about this without the hairs on the back of my neck standing up even now, nine years later, when we embarked on the last lap, with the Red Bull just ahead. Vettel had driven a faultless race, if it had been dry he’d have won by a mile – literally. And here we were, actually behind him! Ron and I were watching in absolute silence.”

As the team looked on with baited breath, it appeared the last chicane would be Button’s best bet of getting past.

It turned out he didn’t even need that long. With the McLaren bearing down on him, Vettel cracked, putting his slick right-rear ever so slightly on the wet line.

Television footage of this race-defining moment shows Vettel sliding out of view at the wrong angle. As the next dramatic shot pans out, the Red Bull is almost off the track and Button dashes through the gap.

The Frome Flyer was in the lead and his team was in ecstasy – even the usually unmoved Dennis:

“Ron Dennis just leapt feet like a centre-forward celebrating the winning goal in the World Cup final” Matt Bishop

“Ron just leapt feet, stuck both of his fists right up in the air like a centre-forward celebrating the winning goal in the World Cup final, and just roared, absolutely roared,” remembers Bishop, “It was one of the most emotional experiences of my career and for Ron too, [even] with his glittering career having won with Lauda, Prost, Senna, Häkkinen.”

Button had half a lap to bring it home safely on what was a drying – but still tricky – racing surface. “I’m leading the Canadian Grand Prix for half a lap,” he recalled. “I feel so much pressure on my shoulders. Now it’s ‘Do not make a mistake!’”

The McLaren man was resolute, bringing his car home for a remarkable win with the team celebrating wildly on the pitwall, with Team Principal Martin Whitmarsh declaring it as “one of the best wins in the history of F1”.

You can’t please everyone though, as one visitor made Bishop aware when congratulating the team.

“Anthony Hamilton came into where we were with a big smile on his face.

“He walked up, obviously extremely disappointed for Lewis, but gave us manly handshakes.

I said, ‘What a brilliant win, absolutely perfect!’ And then he said, ‘Well not perfect, because it would only have been perfect if Jenson had overtaken him fair and square. Remember it was only a Vettel mistake that allowed him to win.’

“‘Yes Anthony, OK.’ Technically, I suppose you could say he was correct! Let’s not quibble. It was the most wonderful race and most wonderful result.”

“Whenever there were volatile conditions in a grand prix, Jenson was always the one who was absolutely on it”

Despite a couple of prangs and a penalty, Button’s calm, measured, yet relentless approach brought the race to him. Bishop has ever since been in awe of the driving style that brought victory in Canada” “Jenson does all his laps at 99% – absolutely extraordinary in terms of that. That’s one thing that those who underestimated Jenson Button never really realized about him.

“Whenever there were volatile conditions in a grand prix, either because it was beginning to get wetter or beginning to get drier, or because there was a tyre degradation issue that was across the board, somewhere like Malaysia or Bahrain, Jenson was always the one who was absolutely on it.”

In his usual smooth style, Button had also casually broke a few records along the way. Along with it being a grand prix run over the longest duration (four hours including the stops), no other grand driver has been through the pits six times and won or done so at such a low average speed – 74.864kmph (46.518mph) – owing to half the race being run under the safety car.

While Button himself doesn’t believe it to be his greatest win, he does think it was his “greatest comeback”.

Few would disagree.