Jenson Button says he was able to produce his best🐼 racing of his Formula 1 career when partnered with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren – rather than his world championship-winning campaign of 2009.

The British driver has given insight into his rivalry with Ham🍬ilton having joined the Woking-based squad as a reigning world champion in 2010 after sealing the F1 title with Brawn the year before.

Button says he always had huge respect for his fellow couꦅntryman and believed they had a healthy rivalry in F1 despite the odd tense moment as💧 team-mates at McLaren which came to a head at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix.

“Did he like being beaten by his teammate? Probably not, but he’s a competitor and I’m sure that like me he relished the challenge. That’s why we do what we do,” Button reveals in his autobiography Life to the Limit. “Personally, he🎃 was fine with me, but you could just tell he was a 🐬little bit peeved.

“I don’t think that Iཧ was to his tast🐻e, if I’m honest. And things took a bit of a turn for the worse in Turkey, when we almost had a collision that led to a minor falling-out between us.”

B♔ut after patching up their relationship, Button feels having Hamilton next to him enabled him to produce his best performances in F1. Button has held his hands up at Hamilton being the b꧋etter qualifier – the four-time F1 world champion now holds the all-time pole position record – but felt he could beat his team-mate in races during their three years together.

“In a race, I could challenge him, and we could race for wins,” Button told Sky Sports. “Over those three years we won a lot and some of the races I did🤡 win were the best races in my career, because I had to beat Lewis to achieve them.”

A post shared by (@jensonbutton_22) on Jan 2, 2018 at 6:45am PST