In 2009, Brawn GP and Jenson Button were the big surprises in Formula 1. The team, which saw the light of day that year after the departure of Honda, managed to race to the world title with Button. Nevertheless, the Briton decided to make the switch to McLaren in the run-up to 2010.
When he announced that within Brawn GP, he was called crazy. “People said it was a crazy choice to drive alongside Hamilton. Even Ross Brawn said it,” he recalled. The High Performance podcast. His team did not thank him for it.
“When I told Nick Fry (the technical director at the time, ed.) he just started yelling at me. He was one of the bosses with Brawn and I remember he just yelled after I told him. I started laughing because it was very uncomfortable.”
“Ross Brawn was very friendly and said ‘I think you’re making a big mistake taking on Lewis’. I didn’t have a contract for the following year and it just didn’t feel like the right place for me, while McLaren that was.”
When he walked into the McLaren factory not much later, he immediately made a point, he says. “I remember coming in there and I remember the first thing I said to Martin Whitmarsh and Ron Dennis: ‘My first question is, is this Lewis team, or will I be treated equally? Because if not , then I don’t want to be here.'”
He was happily assured that he would just be Hamilton’s equal. “They told me that everything would be 100% equal between the two drivers. Then I said ‘okay, I can start now’ and I walked in, I met everyone and I was very good with everyone,” he said. the 2009 world champion.
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