Jenson Button’s wife has said she’s never coming back to the UK after £250,000 worth of jewellery and handbags was stolen outside St Pancras Station.
Button and Brittny were on the way back from a trip to Paris in February – and the former F1 driver was helping a chauffeur to load the case into a car when the thieves struck. A man snatched the carry-on and vanished into the crowd.
Though he was later caught, the bag was never recovered, and Brittny has spoken about how she has no intention of returning to the UK because of how “unsafe” she felt.
“I was kind of shocked. How like unsecure everything felt. Just so many people, so chaotic,” she added. "My husband and, I we really have no interest going back to the UK and it's a shame, because, you know, we will have to go back for family and work.
"It just feels so unsafe and doesn't feel how it once was, and its just unfortunate because that's where my children's grandmother and aunts live."
She added that the moment was “shocking... I'm normally pretty cautious when I'm out in public and travelling, but I just didn't think that there were gangs literally just waiting for people and watching."
It’s a sad turn of events for the former British racing star – but this isn’t even the first time he’s been robbed. We unpack his colourful life – and his love life.
F1 career
Button was born in 1980 in Somerset, the fourth child of the former rallycross driver John Button. According to John, Jenson was named after his Danish rallycross friend Erling Jensen (the ‘e’ was changed to an ‘o’ to differentiate it from racing company Jensen Motors).
The young Button loved racing from an early age; at nine, he won the British Super Prix. As his karting career took off, his studying suffered: he ended up leaving school with only on GSCE. Not that he needed it; his star took off in the 90s, as he pivoted into full-time racing.
He became the youngest runner-up of the Formula A World Championship at the age of 15, and in 1997 became the youngest driver and first Briton to win the European Super A Championship.
From 2000, he started racing in Formula 1 with Williams (becoming the youngest British F1 driver in history at the age of 20), before switching to Benetton. Over the years – until he retired in 2016 – he clocked up 15 Grands Prix wins across 18 seasons, as well as clinching the World Drivers’ Championship in 2009 with British racing group Brawn.
Over the course of his astonishingly successful career, he has accumulated a net worth of around £123m; these days, he makes his money ‘flipping’ houses with wife Brittny, and works as a commentator for Sky Sports F1. He lives in California with his wife, and their two children.
Jenson Button’s ‘playboy’ love life
During the early years of his F1 career, Button gained a ‘playboy’ image for his reputed drinking and love of a good time.
In the early days of his fame, he started going out with actor and singer Louise Griffiths, who was a contestant on Fame Academy. He proposed to her a few years later, in 2003, but they ultimately called off the wedding three months before the big day.
No reason was given, but in an interview given a few months beforehand, Griffiths, said that she wanted “loads of kids. I want to have three children naturally but I'd also like to adopt two. We’ve spoken about it a lot and we have slightly different views.”
Button didn’t meet his second partner, the Japanese-Argentinian model Jessica Michibata, until 2008. They met in a hotel bar in Tokyo, and she apparently turned him down when he first asked her out.
The pair were together for seven years: they split in 2010, before getting back together, and marred in December 2014. In August 2015, they also made headlines when they were robbed – while they were staying in a friend’s villa in St Tropez.
During the night, thieves made off with £300,000 worth of goods, including Michibata’s engagement ring. A few months later they announced their split.
"Jenson and Jessica have decided to go their separate ways and it is very amicable,” a spokesperson said at the time. "There is no-one else involved."
Brittny meets Button
The year after, in 2016, he met former Playboy model Brittny Ward after they were introduced by friends in Los Angeles.
"I had no idea what he did for a living or even what Formula 1 was; I think it was kind of refreshing, the fact I had no idea who he was made it different for him," she told Hello Magazine later. "He could just be himself and not have to worry."
Button agreed. "We were in an Italian restaurant and sat across the table from her and she just asked, 'What do you do for a living?' And I was like, 'Oh, I race cars.' She was like, 'Oh, cool.' She then went, 'Oh, really? What type of cars?' I said, 'Oh, full on cars.' She then went, 'Oh, wow. Is that like NASCAR?' And it was at that moment, I knew that she was the one because she had no idea what I did for a living. That was important to me."
"You know, she liked me for who I was, and she was very sarcastic – since she's American, that's quite unusual. She can understand British sarcasm which I think is important in a relationship."
These days, Brittny works as an interior designer; the couple recently sold their renovated home in Los Angeles for $7.625m. They married in 2022 in California, and have two children: a son, Hendrix and a daughter, Lenny Monrow.
