“There was a good possibility sort of eight years ago”- Jenson Button was on the verge of signing for Ferrari but the move never completed.
Former McLaren driver Jenson Button was one of the most successful drivers of his generation, and even managed to win a Championship win 2009 bolstering his legacy in the sport.
Seeing his successful spell in Formula 1, Ferrari approached him to race for them, as revealed by him in an interview with Motorsport News, but the move never went ahead.
“Every driver would love to race for Ferrari at some point,” Button told Motorsport News. “There’s just something about that team, even this year [2020] it’s tough for them and tough for motorsport fans to see them where they are, but maybe they needed this to come back stronger.
“But I would love to have raced for Ferrari, and there was a good possibility sort of eight years ago, but it just didn’t materialise at the end.
“Pretty much contracts were ready to go and it almost happened, but for many different reasons it did and, to be fair, I was probably better off where I was any way at McLaren.”
At the end of 2013, Button was indeed speculated for a move to Ferrari and was set to partner Fernando Alonso, but in the end, Ferrari went for Kimi Raikkonen. In the following year, they signed Sebastian Vettel.
A glorious move it would have been
Button had a long seven-year stint at McLaren, and in 2017 he had a one-off appearance to fill in for absentee Fernando Alonso at Monaco Grand Prix.
In his prolonged career at McLaren, he managed to grab multiple wins, and surely a stint in Ferrari would have given him a few more podiums to boast in his trophy cabinet.
Though in those years, Ferrari was in talks with multiple drivers, as Robert Kubica in 2018 revealed that he had a word with Ferrari to race for them before his horrific crash on the 2011 Ronde di Andora rally that kept him out of F1 for eight seasons.
Moreover, Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg were also contacted by Ferrari, but both remained to be with their respective teams.
