Jenson took his first McLaren victory in his second race for the team. The manner of the victory set a pattern for what was to follow, with Jenson simply doing a better job than his rivals in tricky conditions. The race started on a wet track, with all the usual mayhem that comes with that, including a first-corner collision between Jenson and Alonso, which dropped Jenson from P4 to P6. This may well have made his race.

With the track drying rapidly, the pit wall handed decision-making over to the drivers, and Jenson called himself in on Lap 6, two laps before anyone else. It left him last, and struggling to keep the car on the greasy surface, but he avoided any terminal mistakes and was soon the fastest car in Albert Park. When the order shook out, he was up to P2. That became P1 just before half-distance when Sebastian Vettel suffered brake failure, after which Jenson came home on cruise control.

Only two races later, China was a very different sort of race to Australia, but shared a common theme: Jenson was able to keep the car on track when others couldn’t. With light rain falling, the race started on slicks – but cars started diving in for Inters on Lap 2. Jenson, however, opted to stay out on the slicks and was promoted to P2, behind Nico Rosberg, who had also stayed out.

The Shanghai International Circuit is a high-deg track, and with the rain shortly after petering out into a mist, the Inters burned and those on the tyre were forced to pit again for slicks. Then, when the heavy rain returned, Jenson took advantage of a lock-up from Rosberg to close the gap and take the lead. He held this through the pit stops, survived a Safety Car restart, and resisted a charge from Hamilton to take another victory.

Several records were set at the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix, but the gist of the story is that Jenson won, and everyone got very wet. It’s the race for which he is arguably most famous, taking the lead coming onto the back straight of the final lap, having been dead last after the first 40 laps of the 70.

The race started behind the Safety Car, and finally got going on Lap 5, only for the Safety Car to return on Lap 8, following a collision between Jenson and Lewis. During which time, Jenson picked up a drive-through penalty for speeding behind the Safety Car. As the rain worsened, the race was red-flagged, and following a two-hour delay, Jenson collided with Fernando shortly after the restart, picking up a puncture. Following yet another Safety Car, Jenson found himself running 21st and last.

What followed was a bit of Jenson magic, as he confidently cut his way through the field. Jenson was up to P4 when the Safety Car was required again on Lap 57, and when that cleared, with nine racing laps left, he completed his mission, passing Mark Webber and Michael Schumacher before coming up against Sebastian Vettel. A half-slide coming onto the back straight cost Vettel, and Jenson was through. To this day, it remains the longest F1 race ever, featuring the most pit stops by pit-stops by a winning driver (six).

Jenson’s 200th Grand Prix start was a real furball of a race. It features a lot of rain, a then-record 88 pit stops, a drying track, more rain, and a Jenson Button victory back at the site of his first win, some five years earlier. This was peak Button: Jenson at his most Jenson-like, rolling out the greatest hits.

Starting on Inters, he stopped a lap earlier than Vettel and had warmer tyres to pass on track for P2. Hamilton held the lead and had built a huge gap… only for Jenson to play the long game, reeling his team-mate back in towards the end of the stint. Not so much the tortoise and the hare, as the hare and the other hare with more patience. When rain started to fall again, shortly after the halfway point, Hamilton came in for Inters, but Jenson reckoned he could live with slicks. Jenson’s view was validated as he retained his composure in the rain, before seeing Hamilton pit again when the rain slowed, meaning Jenson was able to come home ahead of the chasing pack. “The man you need when the track doesn’t let you know what’s going to happen,” hailed Martin Brundle on TV commentary.

We talk a lot about Jenson as the calm head for the tough race, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t win the vanilla races, too. The 2012 Belgian Grand Prix was Jenson’s only McLaren Pole and one in which he held his cool while everything happened behind him.

As history shows, there’s more than one way to approach Spa-Francorchamps, and in 2012, Hamilton took the high downforce route, while Jenson opted for the lower. It gave him more speed on the long, full-throttle sections of track, but required more care in the twisty middle sector. He put the MP4/27 on Pole and made a clean start, but behind him, mayhem ensued, as Romain Grosjean collided with and took out Hamilton, Alonso, and Sergio Perez.

When the race restarted, after the subsequent clear-up, Jenson ran off into the distance, leading every lap of the race and winning by 13 seconds.