Speaker fees:
Topics:
Jenson Button is one of the UK’s most successful racing drivers and the 2009 FIA Formula 1 World Champion.
Across an 18 year career at the highest level of world motorsport he won 15 Grands Prix and competed for some of the sport’s most renowned teams including Williams, Renault, Honda and McLaren.
Jenson began his racing journey in karting, following in the footsteps of his father John Button. His talent quickly became evident. He won the 1991 British Cadet Karting Championship and went on to achieve consistent success in junior categories. At 18 he moved into racing cars where he won the British Formula Ford Championship, the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch and the prestigious McLaren Autosport BRDC Award which led to his first Formula 1 test.
A strong season in British Formula 3 followed, including three race wins and third place in the championship. This earned him a test drive with Williams and ultimately a full time Formula 1 seat. After an impressive debut year he moved to Benetton, later Renault, where he delivered a series of top six finishes and continued to cement his reputation as one of the sport’s brightest young talents.
In 2003 Jenson joined BAR Honda and achieved ten podium finishes, including third place in the 2004 World Championship. His breakthrough Grand Prix victory came at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix. Following Honda’s withdrawal from Formula 1, the team became Brawn GP and Jenson delivered one of the most remarkable title winning seasons in history, securing six victories in the opening seven races and claiming the 2009 World Championship.
He later joined McLaren where he won a further eight Grands Prix between 2010 and 2012 and finished runner up in the 2011 World Championship. Jenson stepped back from full time Formula 1 racing in 2016 and went on to win the 2018 Super GT Championship in Japan.
Since retiring from competition he has remained an influential figure within the sport, becoming a Senior Advisor to Williams and a key member of the Sky Sports F1 presenting team, where he shares his expertise with global audiences.
As a speaker, Jenson brings the mindset and insight of a Formula 1 World Champion. Drawing on experiences from two decades at the top of elite sport, he offers practical and inspiring lessons on performance under pressure, high level teamwork, adapting to change and the resilience needed to succeed in fast moving environments. His stories from the world of motorsport give audiences a rare and powerful understanding of what it takes to operate at the very highest standard.
The requirements of Formula One’s team leaders have changed significantly in recently years as teams have become larger, more complex, and the business model to which the sport operates has been transformed. The leaders in F1 today are responsible for leading up to 1800 full time employees, creating a high-performance organisation which is fully aligned behind a strategy aimed at achieving a set of well defined, ambitious goals.
Competitive team leaders create a culture in which team personnel take responsibility and are happy to be held accountable for their performance. Developing a high degree of psychological safety is key, requiring staff to speak up and speak out, with strong cross functional communications. A relentless focus on continuous improvement is part of the F1 leaders mindset, and teams take a data-driven approach to measuring performance, highlighting issues and analysing developments. But whilst F1 is a technocentric sport, the successful leaders recognise that it is the people who make a difference. This is why so much effort is deployed to create an environment within which employees thrive, using their combined talents to problem solve and create highly innovative solutions in order to drive competitive advantage.
Competitive Formula One teams comprise 1800 staff, less than 10% of whom attend the race events, so teamwork requires complete alignment, shared purpose and close collaboration across the business. The world championship includes 24 Grands Prix and these represent a series of non-negotiable deadlines which the entire organisation has to meet in terms of car development, hardware and software upgrades. The ultimate, public example of high-performance teamwork comes in the form of the mandatory pit stops which have to be performed during a race – the record now stands at 1.8 seconds during which 22 staff carry out 36 tasks under extreme pressure.
Alignment behind the team’s strategies and ambitious goals is vital, so too having the agility to flex strategy in the face of constant changes in technology and the performance of competitors.
Safety is a first order priority in Formula One and the last 25 years have seen a profound change to the way in which the sport manages risk. Between 1950 and 1994, there were over 40 driver fatalities at races; there has been one since. This has been made possible by creating clear priorities as regards safety. Compliance is non-negotiable. Safety is not an area of competitive advantage. Safety systems, processes and technologies are shared so that F1 doesn’t have islands of excellence in oceans of mediocrity.
However, the risk averse teams never win in F1 – the teams which embrace and manage risk are more likely to try new things, innovate in ways both small and large, and ultimately drive competitive advantage. It’s the difference between participating and competing. The other factor is ‘fear of failure’. Teams that have a blame culture create such a degree of fear that everyone minimises their contribution and hides their mistakes, whereas those which thrive on creating a learning environment of continuous improvement have a degree of openness, honesty and transparency which promotes creativity and innovation, and taking risks, in a controlled way.
Every industry is witnessing change and Formula One is no different. One of the challenges facing F1 teams is that the sector is ever-changing – so change management and leading teams through periods of transformation is an essential part of the job. Change comes in many forms; technology, compliance, competition, customer demands, environmental and social issues. F1 has had to reinvent its business model, embrace digitalisations, adapt to a changing media and social landscape. Above all, F1’s leadership teams have had to communicate, manage and implement transformation strategies, bringing their teams with them and ensuring that they make the most from embracing change.
