https://www.tumblr.com/manykinsmen/731692640239796224/if-not-lewis-who-do-u-think-wouldve-been-the
just to add on to this, agree with what you're saying, and I find it not funny exactly that it was almost a Jenson Nico line up, when Brawn were changing to Mercedes, Jenson said he would've stayed if they could promise a car with a similar performance, but when Brawn switched over, Mercedes wanted an all German driver line up, hence why they brought Schumacher back and we had Nico/Michael for 3 years and Jenson ended up at McLaren
I do think a Jenson and Nico line up would've been interesting, I don't think Jenson would've played the sort of stress and mind games that Michael did to Nico (at least none of Jenson's teammates have ever said he was like that, that I know of)
Jenson was a dream of a teammate to have (which makes Lewis causing pretty much all the Britclaren drama all by himself very funny). As much as Jenson was prone to pranks, it was cross-grid and never singled out his teammate. He also had some absolute nightmares of teammates early on his career, including:
- Ralf Schumacher, his first teammate, a walking red flag and very big on the psychological warfare, totally unnecessary with a rookie he was greatly out-scoring.
- Jarno Trulli who was a good egg but so much favoured by Flavio Briatore that even though Jenson outperformed him, Flavio fired Button and declared Jenson “just a lazy playboy” (he was replaced by Alonso).
- Jacques Villeneuve who said he should be in a boy band, not F1, and refused to speak to him. (We can read a lot into his gentle bullying of Nico for being pretty - probably that he was projecting anxieties from when he came into F1).
These were all people that Jenson extended kindness to, despite receiving nothing in return. He eventually even won over some of them (including Villeneuve). In the same circumstances, most rookie/early career drivers (including Lewis) learn to give as good as they get but Jenson really took the Waymond Wang approach to it and used kindness as his defence. He also lent into the playboy thing and made some unfortunate comments about potential female F1 drivers he had to walk back later in his career.
But the teammate who had the most influence on Jenson’s teammate persona was probably Rubens Barrichello. Rubens was eternally polite and deferential (somehow avoiding the Brazilian drinking water) and the ultimate grid-Dad, willing to sacrifice his race to support Jenson and the team. Seriously Barrichello was grid dad to:
- the entire Brazilian mafia as we used to call them (Massa, Da Matta, Bruno Senna, Lucas Di Grassi)
- Nico Hulkenberg and Christian Klien
- Pastor Maldonado
- Jenson himself
This had the effect of turning Jenson into a pretty impressive grid-Dad to Checo and K-Mag. In fact, all of these people who had the chance to be grid Dads have been great grid Dads and even produced further grid Dads (Rubens-Felipe-Valtteri-Zhou is a chain).
He ended up being pretty guarded when Lewis was his teammate (bitch tweeted his telemetry!) and had a very much laugh it off approach to attempts at psychological warfare. There was never a chance of being a grid-Dad to Lewis who had learnt from the Alonso school of hard knocks to bite and scratch, and couldn’t identify when it wasn’t necessary.
So yeah, Jenson was basically the best teammate you could get on the grid of that era, other than maybe Heikki Kovalainen who is the kindest, most sportsmanly, lovely and calm human that motorsport has ever produced. I still remember watching him calmly extinguish his own vehicle in the tunnel in Singapore (the marshalls couldn’t get there so they passed him a fire extinguisher), waving to the fans once he was finished. Jenson might have done some gentle pretty-boy ribbing but other than that he would have been a nice guy to be paired with, for Nico or anyone.
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the year of ferrari arrives, praying for easier spreadsheeting ahead (2004 edition)
that is so many pins, i am so jealous of the owner of this hat, 2004 australian gp
are the mechanics watching the race on a laptop hung from the ceiling?, 2004 australian gp
jordan drivers nick heidfeld and giorgio pantone playing basketball, (different yellow team) renault drivers fernando alonso and jarno trulli (in an amazing hairstyle) playing tennis, 2004 australian gp
some seaside training (felipe massa and giancarlo fisichella w trainers), 2004 malaysian gp
mood (takuma sato), 2004 bahrain gp
why did we stop creating horrifying charicature puppets of drivers :/, 2004 san marino gp
the 'felipe massa playing sports' saga continues, 2004 spanish gp
renault drivers conferring whilst sporting fashionable hairdos, 2004 monaco gp
pictured: me and my bestie being oh so proud of each other, 2004 monaco gp
..floating car, 2004 monaco gp
me explaining how i make my spreadsheets to my uninterested friends, 2004 canadian gp
a jackie stewart parade, 2004 united states gp
hes coming for you (mark webber), 2004 french gp
hes being caught so tenderly, 2004 british gp
magical girl schumi (this podium celebration is too good not to include), 2004 german gp
why are there so many weirdly blurry photos like this (mark webber), 2004 hungarian gp
what did they put into the renault drivers water this weekend goddamn, 2004 italian gp
the fuel pigs are back!, 2004 italian gp
ill just put this here, 2004 chinese gp
unusual photobomber, 2004 brazilian gp
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Street Circuit of Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008.
Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastian Vettel, Giancarlo Fisichella, Adrian Sutil,Mark Webber, David Coulthard, Nico Rosberg, Kazuki Nakajima, Timo Glock, Jarno Trulli, Fernando Alonso, Nelsinho Piquet, Rubens Barrichello, Jenson Button, Nick Heidfeld, Robert Kubica, Felipe Massa, Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen (Class of 2008) Posing with Bridgestone tyres director Hiroshi Yasukawa and Hirohide Hamashima.
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