Jenson Button h🧔as revealed the key differences he has noticed in Lewis Hamilton since their time together as Formula 1 teammates at McLaren.

Hamilton and Button were teammates at McLaren for three seasons between 2010 and 2012 and the latter🏅 believes his former teammate, who is on the brink of clinching record-equalling seventh drivers’ title, has upped his game since making the ඣswitch to Mercedes in 2013.

But t🦩he 2009 world champion disagrees with Hamilton’s recent claim that Valtteri Bottas fails to get the credit he deserves for how competitive a rival he is, adding the Finn could and should be push🧔ing him harder.

“Lewis is a different Lewis to what I knew,” Button recalled on . “Lewis when I knew him was lightningܫ quick in qualifying. Like Valtteri can do.

“But in the race, he was quick, and sometimes he could get one over on you, but a lot of the time he’d make mistakes or he would not understand how to get from A to B as quick as possible. He’d try and do every lap as fast as he could, and he would destroy tyres, he would♒ over-use fuel, choose the wrong strategy.

“But now it’s a completely different Lewis. He doesn’t do that. Also because he doesn’t have a Max Verstappen pushing him. He doesn’t have a Nico Rosberg pushing him, either♑. I’m not going to say my name in that because that would be weird.”

Button feels both he and Hamilton were always closely-matched duriဣng their spell together as teammates and reckons one of them could have claimed the tit🍃le with McLaren had the team not fielded such a strong line-up.

“He beat me in qualifying,” Button explained. “He won more races than me. But I think I won eight, races, h💜e won 10 races, so it was pretty close.

“We had a lot o♉f great races in our time together. For me, he was quicker than me in qualifying. I out-qualified him a few times, but ꦆnothing like he did with me.

“But in the race, that’s when I would come into my ow𝄹n, and I knew how to work the cars, work the tyres, work the str🌌ategy, in mixed conditions especially. So I loved our fights. It was sad when he left the team, it really was.

“I wish I had the opportun♋ity to race against him in a championship-winning car. If one of us wasn’t in the other car, we might 🐓have won the championship. We took so many wins off each other.”

Button also revealed he feels Max Verstappen is the outright quickest driver over one ▨lap on the current F1𒅌 grid.

“Over one 🎃lap I think he is, over the race, who knows,” Button replied when asked if he truly believed Verstappen was ✨the fastest driver over one lap.

“I think him and Lewis are up there. I also think Charles Leclerc is with them at the moment. I think that Danny Ric[ciardo]’s with t🍸hem. I think those four stand alone at the moment.”