Jenson Button at the London Marathon for Cancer Research

Jenson Button is what we might call an athlete with a capital A. The McLaren driver, waiting to get into the cockpit of his MP4-30 for the Spanish Grand Prix, continues to train and this weekend took part in the London Marathon. The Briton closed his effort with a time of 2 hours, 52 minutes and 30 seconds, improving his previous record, achieved the previous year, by 6 minutes. The 35-year-old achieved a time close to that of a semi-professional given that a professional generally finishes a marathon at around 3 min/km on average while Jenson Button traveled around 4 minutes and 5 seconds per kilometre, so much so that he was protagonist of a head-to-head with the Olympic rowing champion James Cracknell, Olympic gold medalist in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004.

Triathlete with great qualities, expert pilot. An athlete with a capital A but above all, a big heart. Yes, because the McLaren driver's participation in the London Marathon was not intended to be just personal training. The 35-year-old ran to support Team Jenson Button's fundraising campaign in the quest for the cancer treatment: “My foundation, established in 2010, was created to finance a series of charitable causes – said the Marathon finisher – I care a lot about it and I try to support these causes in the best way possible. I'm currently working with Cancer Research, and we're trying to raise how much as much money as possible to help cancer research."

For the record, the McLaren driver finished in 949th position in a race with over 37.800 runners subscribers.

Eleonora Ottonello
@lapisinha