Button sprang a surprise on the world of F1 in 2009, taking the upstart Brawn BGP 001 to six victories and earning his World Championship.
It had been a long, hard ride from winning masses of kart races when he was a kid to winning the 2009 Formula One World Championship. But, like so many other kart stars of the last 30 years or so, Jenson Button did it, with a lot of team changes and disappointments in between.
Born in 1980, Jenson—named after his late father John’s great friend and rallycross opponent Erling Jensen of Denmark—was given his first kart when he was eight-years old, won the 1989 British Super Prix a year later, the 1997 Ayrton Senna Memorial Cup and all 34 races in the 1999 British Cadet Kart Championship, when he was 10. And if that’s not promise, I’d like to know what is!
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