Button: A lot of pressure on Russell at Mercedes

Last year, Mercedes won one race with Russell claiming his maiden win in Brazil; Hamilton won none and his win tally remained static for the first time in a season since he began his incredible journey in the top flight back in 2007 with McLaren. He still has a record 103 F1 wins to his name.

At 38, with seven F1 titles on his CV, Hamilton is probably at his peak, while 25-year-old Russell has a long road ahead to his summit as an F1 driver.

Thus the common sense would be Hamilton is the one under pressure to beat his younger teammate and remain relevant while commanding the big bucks. But his former McLaren teammate Button sees it differently.

As an elder statesman of the sport - with 306 Grand Prix starts who celebrated 50 F1 podiums, 15 times as a winner, and 2009 F1 World Champion to boot - Button knows a thing or two about calling it quits.

He told Sky F1: “It is something we all go through at some point in our career and it’s a reason why a lot of people retire. They’re not in a winning car anymore and that’s why I left. You can deal with the pressure you put yourself under and the calendar if you’re in a winning car. When you’re not, then you are like: you know what, I’ve had enough. I want to get out."

Regarding Hamilton, his teammate at McLaren for three years, Button said: “Mercedes have given him a winning car for so many years. Last year obviously they didn’t, but the car did win a race last year.

So you’d say at the end of the year, they were strong and I think Lewis was on it. His performances were very consistent through mid to end of the season. Very, very quick. I think he’ll start this year flat out. He’s going to be on it from the word go.

"I look forward to seeing that, it’s going to put a lot of pressure on George Russell at Mercedes but I think it’s a good pairing and I look forward to that fight," added Button.

As for Mercedes' rivals in 2023, the Button ventured: “Red Bull always comes out with a good car. I think they’d be competitive. The Ferrari looks nice. It looks really nice. It looks like they’ve worked on areas where they were weak and they’ve taken some risks in other areas.

“It’s strange about Mercedes because the car, I would say it’s beautiful, it’s the most beautiful car, but they might possibly be changing the sidepods. I’m surprised they didn’t do that over the winter rather than into the season but they obviously believe in the style they have right now for the first few races.

“I look forward to that fight at the front. We all hope for that three manufacturers at the front fighting for the Championship, don’t we? And I think we’ll get that at some point this season," predicted Button.

Worth noting for the sake of history, Button quit F1 at the end of 2016 after two particularly sad seasons with McLaren, the great team at its very worst. In retrospect, he should have quit F1 a couple of seasons earlier. At the time he was 36, today he is 43.

But in 2017, amid the Fernando Alonso havoc caused at Zak Brown's McLaren the Spaniard was at the Indy 500 during the Monaco Grand Prix weekend which prompted a call for Button, winner at the Principality in 2009, to sub for the Spaniard.

But the 2017 edition proved to be an embarrassing comeback for the Briton, to cut a long story short: his 306th race ended after he punted the Sauber of Pascal Wehrlein into the wall just before the tunnel, and Button parked his broken McLaren shortly after. And that was that.