Founded by the Kiwi Bruce McLaren in 1963, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing merged in 1981 with the Project 4 team, which was being run by the barn owl Ron Dennis. The team is now part of McLaren Racing, a member of the McLaren Group, under the umbrella of McLaren Holdings, a subsidiary of McLaren PLC, which is wholly owned by McLaren (World Domination) Ltd.

Bruce McLaren is currently the only driver to have won a Formula One world championship race in a car bearing his own name as a constructor*, although the dotdotdotcomma-sponsored driver Panasonic Toyota, currently racing a borrowed Caterham with limited success, is optimistic of one day becoming the second.

The team has rapidly become one of the most successful in F1 history and is widely regarded as technologically top-notch, if sometimes a little fragile operationally. They are constantly trying to persuade everyone that they may be stiff and corporate but they still know how to have a good time. It's not terribly convincing.

They're far from unemotional, however, and Ron Dennis can often be glimpsed furtively wiping away a tear or two of joy. In fact, when one of his favoured drivers has won against seemingly insuperable odds during a troubled time for the team, it can sometimes be hard to hear the national anthems over the sound of Ron's blubbing.

*Other than, we've just realised, Jack Brabham. Who also won the world championship. Arse. Rest assured, our research team will be hung, drawn and quartered. Or should that be "hanged"?

Jenson Button came into the world in Somerset in 1980. He has two slightly silly middle names - Alexander Lyons - and three slightly older sisters, born at regular internals in 1967, 1970 and 1973, although far be it from us to suggest that little Jenson was slightly less planned than his sisters.

Success in karting and Formula Ford led to Formula 3 and then almost immediately on to Formula One, where he made a few rookie mistakes but also qualified third in a Williams at Spa, which went a long way towards shutting everyone the hell up.

Still under contract to Williams, Jenson drove the 2001 season for Benetton, which became Renault in 2002 and BAR the year after. This was clearly all a bit confusing for Button, who announced in mid-2004 that he would be driving for Williams the following season, having signed contracts for both teams. Once that legal Gordian knot had been cut, Jenson went and did it all again in reverse in 2005, as he tried to wriggle out of his contract with Williams to stay with BAR.

Throughout all this vacillating, Jenson was linked with a succession of beauties, perhaps indicating that what women really want is a rich man in touch with his feminine side or, to put it another way, a Formula One driver who can never make his f**king mind up.

Button is often joined at races by his father John who, ever since Jenson won the first race of the 2009 season, has taken to wearing his "lucky pink shirt", conveniently forgetting - in the way that superstitious people do - all the times he wore the same shirt and Jenson finished three laps down.

Jenson has homes in Monaco, the UK and Bahrain, where he pursues his hobbies of mountain biking, almost growing a beard and browsing through lingerie catalogues to find his next girlfriend.

A phenomenally successful F1 team which won nine constructors' titles in 20 years (it took Ferrari 50 years to do the same) but which usually dispenses with the services of the drivers who win the title for them: Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Damon Hill all took championships and then left the team at the end of the year, for one reason or another.

The team hit a purple patch in the 1990s, when a combination of Adrian Newey's ground-breaking designs, some jolly clever electronics and a handful of half-decent drivers resulted in repeated title wins. The 1992 and 1993 Williams are probably the most technologically advanced Formula One cars to date and you could almost say that they drove themselves, without wishing to devalue the titles that Mansell and Prost won with them, of course.

This period also produced the iconic blue and white Rothmans livery, which looked great but which was probably responsible for shifting truckloads of their cigarettes. The team did attempt to make amends later, however, by running cars plastered with stickers for Niquitin and thereby promoting something to help you give up what they'd been urging you to become addicted to a few years previously.

For the 2004 season, the Williams challenger sported a highly unusual "walrus nose", which did nothing for the car's performance but which did at least mean that Ralf Schumacher was no longer the ugliest thing in the paddock. The innovative nose proved uncompetitive and was replaced by something more conventional in the second half of the year. Ralf also proved uncompetitive and was replaced by someone more talented at the end of the year.