"He just straight outdrove Lewis Hamilton": How good was Jenson Button?

F1 pundit Mark Hughes recently praised Jenson Button for how brilliantly he drove in unpredictable conditions during his prime and how he was better than his teammate, Lewis Hamilton.

Weather has always been a huge factor in how a race weekend pans out. If it is raining and the track is wet, it can completely shuffle the grid. However, when there was a mixture of dry and wet track areas with constantly changing conditions, Jenson Button used to excel.

Speaking on The Race F1 podcast, Hughes initially praised Jenson Button and how the Briton drove in changeable conditions. He explained how Button feels the car in a much different way than other drivers, simply by looking at the track surface and how each condition feels inside the car. He said:

"Jenson was fantastic in changeable conditions and he was also very good at calling it from the cockpit. He just had a fantastic feel for the car, he describes it as he drives in a different way to the others."

"He's just looking at the road surface and translating how that feels in his hands; he feels that car differently. Whenever the grip was, you know, maybe a bit drier on this corner, a bit wetter on that one, and not that quite the same as that next lap, that's when he was at his best."

Furthermore, the F1 pundit also explained how Lewis Hamilton was the best in completely wet conditions. However, Jenson Button was able to outperform the seven-time world champion in unpredictable and changeable conditions.

Hughes concluded:

"In full wet conditions, Lewis was probably faster, but in changeable conditions, he was absolutely fantastic. A couple of times, he just straight outdrove Lewis Hamilton as a teammate in those conditions. So I think he was something special in those very specific conditions."

---

Jenson Button on Lewis Hamilton's exceptional car control during his rookie years in McLaren

Jenson Button recently shared a story about how well Lewis Hamilton was able to handle an unstable car. When the seven-time world champion was still a rookie, he did a test with McLaren at Silverstone. Button and other engineers noticed the amount of oversteer correction in the telemetry but were surprised when Hamilton did not mention anything wrong with the car's instability.

Button stated:

“The first time we ran him at McLaren [as a rookie late in 2006], I recall the guys looking at the steering trace at the Silverstone test. The oversteer corrections in all the braking zones and corner entries were massive. We were waiting for his feedback and he didn’t mention that."

He added:

"We asked ‘How’s the car on entry?’ and he said, ‘Fine’. His natural car control was extraordinary. Most drivers would have been quite unhappy with such instability.”

This proved how Lewis Hamilton was a natural when it came to handling an F1 car.