Jenson Button's dream F1 return turns into a nightmare as 15-place grid penalty sours McLaren's relationship with Honda

Button qualified ninth but must start at the back of the field

Button will start at the back of the grid (Getty)

For a while, it went like a dream. Jenson Button’s polished performance here on Thursday thoroughly vindicated his own decision to forego the chance to test a McLaren Honda after the race in Bahrain, and to rely on experience of it in the simulator at the McLaren factory in Woking, as he matched his team-mate’s pace despite a six-month lay-off.

But then disaster befell him on Saturday morning, with the need to change his Honda power unit’s MGU-H energy recovery system and turbocharger – the fifth time this has been necessary on this chassis this year - earned him a hope-shredding 15 grid-place penalty. That not only turned the dream into a brutal nightmare but added fuel to the flaming alliance between the race team and the Japanese manufacturer with which they had once enjoyed record-smashing domination in the Eighties and Nineties.

In many ways, the pointlessness that the former champion now faces after qualifying a brilliant ninth but falling to last on the grid – thus condemned to an afternoon of running at the back, with zero chance of scoring points – summarised the increasing futility of Honda’s F1 floundering programme.

On Wednesday Button was bubbling at the prospect of driving here again, but admitted: “If I didn’t drive a Formula One car again I’d be happy, but I am going to drive one tomorrow, and I’m very happy about that as well. To jump in for the Monaco Grand Prix - it’s perfect for me. I think every driver would do the same. For a one-off race in Monaco… Yes, you definitively would. It’s whole the season of Formula One that just drains you after so many years.

“It’s a new challenge driving a car that’s very different, but it’s around the Monaco circuit that I love. I’ve won here before. I’ve lived here for 17 years, so it’s very special to me and yes, I’m excited to see what I can do.”

The answer on Thursday was that he could go respectably fast in both practice sessions, and run very close to team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne.

He’d also admitted that he was nervous, before he got into the car again.

“Of course I am. I think I’d be wrong to not be. It’s something very different and if I wasn’t nervous or I didn’t have butterflies, I shouldn’t be getting in the car because I don’t care then. But I do care and I want to do the best job I can and I want to enjoy myself. That was the first thing that I got from my engineer, because he said basically the important thing this weekend was to enjoy myself.”

Button is back for one race only (Getty)

Poignantly, it was the first thing his late father John, who died not far from here, at his house in Eze, in January 2014, had said to him before he competed in – and won – his very first kart race when he was eight.

And he did enjoy himself. His girlfriend Brittny Ward was with him, as were loyal friends Chris Buncombe and physio Mike Collier, ready for the last hurrah. And he felt fit, having maintained his training in readiness for the triathlon campaign that has replaced racing cars as his overriding passion.

“I qualified for the world championship in triathlons,” he said proudly, referring to the amateur class in which he competed while his old friends were racing in Barcelona recently. It’s the key part of the new life in which he is clearly extremely relaxed and happy. “I won my race, which is good. So, yes, very happy with that. It’s all going to plan.” That plan is to compete for his second world title, in Chattanooga in September.

All he had to worry about Thursday night was some minor neck discomfort, which ‘Mikey Muscles’ duly massaged away with a bit of treatment.

“It was funny when I did the install lap this morning, I had a little giggle to myself,” Button said. “Have I missed it? No, but when you jump in the car, you definitely enjoy the moments that you have. I’ve really enjoyed practice, both the long and short runs. FP2 was a bit of a struggle to really find my feet with the car. I’m braking so much later than what I’m used to here and carrying so much speed into the corners. Adjusting to that takes time, so with another day with the engineers and a look through the data, I’m confident that I can improve for Saturday.

Button is back for one race only (Getty)

“As soon as I exited the pits, everything felt very natural. The weirdest thing is when you’re behind a car or when you let a car past, because you look at it and it’s gigantic. Then you feel really uncomfortable because you think, maybe I am too close to the barriers. But the car fits well; it fits like a glove.”

It all looked good for Saturday and Sunday, until the penalty arose. It was a brutal disappointment not just for Button, but for McLaren. And it hurt again, as they watched him fall from ninth on the grid to last.

Relations between the team and Honda have been strained ever since the under-developed power unit’s woeful performance throughout 2015, when Alonso deliberately called it a “GP2 engine” over the radio in Honda’s home race. Things improved last year, but all that work was undone by unsuccessful ‘improvements’ made for 2017.

Honda’s research and development engineers are said to be obsessed with not losing face, apparently unaware in their own little bubble in Sakura that the world already sees them as having sullied the legacy of engineering greatness that was the pride of company founder Soichiro Honda. Their refusal to accept inputs and proven improvements from the likes of Swiss engineer Mario Illien, whose Ilmor engines formed the basis of Mercedes’ previous success normally aspirated F1 engines, and, it is suggested, even a refusal to consider the opportunity to rebadge a current Andy Cowell-designed Mercedes engine as a Honda, are thought to have brought the alliance to crisis point during a Steering Committee meeting here on Friday.

You have to ask yourself now how much longer McLaren can tolerate a ludicrous situation continuing to jeopardise their commercial wellbeing, and how long it is before something breaks. Something a lot more fundamental than yet another Honda mechanical component.