Unless McLaren wave many more millions at him — and even then that almost certainly won’t be enough — Jenson Button will retire from Formula One at the end of the season, fulfilled, lamented and lauded.

The news may well be announced as soon as this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka — at his favourite track, in a country he loves and from where his wife, Jessica, comes.

For Sportsmail understands that Button, who is 35, is preparing to call time on a career that has lasted 16 seasons, yielded one world championship, with Brawn, and 15 victories from 278 races so far. Doing so requires a gulp — Formula One is the only world Button has known since he was plucked as an unknown 19-year-old to drive for Williams.

Jenson Button, pictured during the weekend of the Singapore Grand Prix, is set to retire from Formula One

The Brit has endured a terrible season at the uncompetitive McLaren Honda team and retired from the weekend's SIngapore Grand Prix held at Marina Bay

Button has been team-mates with Fernando Alonso during 2015 but both former world champions have struggled badly to make the McLaren team competitive

JENSON BUTTON F1 CAREER STATS 2000: Williams (8th) 0 wins - 12 pts 2001: Benetton (17th) 0 wins - 2 pts 2002: Renault (7th) 0 wins - 14 pts 2003: BAR (9th) 0 wins - 17 pts* 2004: BAR (3rd) 0 wins - 85 pts 2005: BAR (9th) 0 wins - 37 pts 2006: Honda (6th) 1 win - 56 pts 2007: Honda (15th) 0 wins - 6 pts 2008: Honda (18th) 0 wins - 3 pts 2009: Brawn (1st) 6 wins - 95 pts 2010: McLaren (5th) 2 wins - 214 pts * 2011: McLaren (2nd) 3 wins - 270 pts 2012: McLaren (5th) 3 wins - 188 pts 2013: McLaren (9th) 0 wins - 73 pts 2014: McLaren (8th) 0 wins - 126 pts 2015: McLaren (18th) 0 wins - 6 pts** * Points awarded in F1 grand prix increased ** season still in progress Advertisement

Perhaps he will think he carried on a season too long. The McLaren he is driving this year is woeful because of the unreliable, underpowered Honda engine, and there is no indication that next year’s model will be day-and-night better. The engine has made him look like a monkey that he certainly isn’t.

‘The joy of being in an F1 car is only there if you’re fighting at the front and achieving something,’ said Button after another point-less race, at Singapore last Sunday.

Where he will go is not clear. He has had talks with Porsche about joining the World Endurance Championship, though McLaren, who wanted to retain him, would first need to release him from his contract.

He is on a one-year-plus-one deal and is completing his first year now, with the second optional for both sides. However, McLaren can block him racing elsewhere if he leaves at this stage.

Another option is starting his own rallycross team. His father John, his most ardent supporter during their journey together from Frome, Somerset to world glory, was a prominent rallycross driver in the Seventies, and Jenson recently spoke enthusiastically about the sport. He also recorded a rallycross feature with the BBC.

Talks with McLaren chief Ron Dennis have failed to advance for Button who is set to end 16 years in F1

Button's career highlight came after he won the world championship in 2009 with the Brawn team

Part of Button’s post-F1 life may include media work. He has been linked with a job at Chris Evans’s revamped Top Gear, though it is understood any TV work would be no more than part of his portfolio.

Button was handed his debut by Frank Williams in 2000. He was cast as a playboy, and not entirely without foundation. When he parked his yacht in the harbour master’s berth at Monaco, the image was reinforced. Flavio Briatore, his boss at Benetton, his second team, asked him after one Monaco race if he had had any luck finding a new apartment in the principality. ‘No,’ said Button. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ said Briatore, ‘you were looking around the whole f*****g race.’

Button was a fresh-faced arrival in F1 when he made his debut with the Williams team in 2000

He matured but there remained something of the movie star who got the girl in the last reel: in his case, the beautiful lingerie model he recently married.

Button was smooth behind the wheel, every turn of the wheel being accomplished with a nudge and a dink. He was tactically supreme — the driver most likely to call a tyre change at the right time as the clouds closed in. Perhaps most importantly, he won the acclaim of contemporaries for driving hard but scrupulously fairly.

His career was a slow-burner. He picked some sluggish teams. It took him 113 races to win, at Hungary in the wet in 2006.

But with Brawn in 2009, he was given a championship-winning car and he delivered, romping into a title lead and then, after a nervous pause, closing it out in Brazil. The pictures of him celebrating with his dad show his eyes popping out as if he had just discovered that heaven existed. But perhaps his greatest validation was secured when he raced at McLaren with Lewis Hamilton and outscored his fellow Brit over their three seasons. It was not the tortoise against the hare, but the triumph of calculation over raw instinct.

He is likely to be replaced by Dane Kevin Magnussen, who drove for McLaren in 2014, or Stoffel Vandoorne, the Belgian who leads GP2.

And to think that Button was the young shaver once.