Jenson Button: Life to the Limit: My Autobiography by Jenson Button

Author:Jenson Button [Button, Jenson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911600374
Publisher: Blink Publishing
Published: 2017-10-19T05:00:00+00:00

36

Qualifying at Monaco was split into two sessions, one on Thursday afternoon and one Saturday. Thursday went well. Very well. I was third behind Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello in the Ferraris, leaving in my wake the likes of DC and Kimi Räikkönen in the McLarens and Trulli and Alonso in the Renaults (spit).

You have to do well at qualifying in Monaco. The circuit’s notoriously difficult to overtake, so I was especially pleased with my progress.

Saturday was a lovely day. They usually are in Monaco. It’s a special place, which is one of the reasons I rented an apartment there, and why so many of us live there. (Friendly taxes, a lack of paparazzi, and the proximity of the motor-racing community are three more that spring to mind.)

That particular day was very sunny. The grandstands were heaving and the harbour was packed with boats, while up there on the road I was feeling full of beans, having the time of my life. Little less than a year before I’d been working my notice at Renault, chewing my nails as my managers worked to find me a new drive and wondering about my future in the sport. Now here I was, riding on the crest of a great Friday’s qualifying. Boy from Frome metaphorically flicking the V-signs in Monaco. Keep it up in the afternoon and I could be looking at a podium.

With practice over, I set out for my first timed run. In the meantime, we’d changed the set-up. I had too much understeer, so we’d altered the balance of the car by adjusting the rollbar stiffness on the rear. Going stiffer on the rear mechanical grip means you get less rear grip but you have a stronger front end, and I should have compensated for that in the drive.

But I didn’t. Or not enough. I came out of the tunnel, braked for the chicane and the rear wheels locked solid.

Which is bad.

What happens next takes place in a split-second: it’s me feeling the brakes lock, releasing the brake, sensing the rear snap around, the lurching, floating, spacey feeling as my world spins and I know I’m no longer in control as its hurled at the left-hand barrier just outside the mouth of the tunnel and hits it with a horrendous screeching sound that they hear on the boats on the harbour, wiping out the two front wheels and ending what slim hope I have of controlling the skid, turning me from driver to passenger, skateboarding backwards with the G-force threatening to pull the skin from my body, everything, even my heart, feeling as though it’s being gripped by an invisible giant hand that wants to separate my bones from the rest of me, as though I’m being sucked into a tube that’s too small for me, expecting impact and thinking this is going to hurt, this is really going to hurt and then bang hitting the second barrier.

And being out cold.

The next face I saw was a marshal. He was mouthing something but I couldn’t hear him.

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