Jenson Button to be a Hypercar driver in WEC

Jenson Button at the 24 Hours of Le Mans: the story was written last June, on the occasion of the centenary of the iconic race in Le Mans.

The 2009 world champion with Brawn GP teamed up with Mike Rockenfeller, former Audi LMP1 driver, and Jimmie Johnson, multiple Nascar champion. The three men then took part in the centenary race in a specially designed Chevrolet Camaro Nascar and finished the race. And that, at a much faster pace than the GTE-Am, who were experiencing their last 24 Hours.

But the rumors were rampant about the arrival of a potential world champion for the 2024 WEC season. Would it be Sebastian Vettel? The rumors spread as quickly as they emerged.

But Jenson Button, on the other hand, had not been ruled out as an option to join the Jota team in the Hypercar category: the English team will field two private Porsche 963s for the upcoming year. Only car No. 38, which has already been entered this season, still had a driver to be announced.

A career that endures

The Jota team confirmed, this Friday, the arrival of the highly popular British driver in the top class of endurance racing. It must be said that the spectacular enthusiasm generated by endurance racing since the advent of the Hypercar requires teams to have the best drivers in the world.

Jenson Button will be driving alongside Danish driver Oliver Rasmussen and British driver Phil Hanson, who just transferred from United Autosport in LMP2.

But the 43-year-old Englishman is no stranger to the WEC: he had already participated in the 2018-2019 season with the Russian team SMP Racing, during a period when LMP1 experienced a crisis which proved fatal to it.

In his career, across all major disciplines, Jenson Button drove under the banner of four major manufacturers: BMW, during his debut with Williams in 2000; Renault, with Benetton in 2001, and then with the factory team in 2002; Honda, with BAR from 2003 to 2005, the factory team from 2006 to 2008, and with McLaren from 2015 to his one-off appearance in Monaco in 2017; Mercedes, with Brawn GP in the year he won the championship in 2009, and then with McLaren until 2014; and finally Chevrolet, at Le Mans in June.

Although he isn’t a factory driver, the Englishman will have, with Porsche, his 5th manufacturer in his career, at the highest level of endurance.

The reassuring point for him is that Jota has repeatedly held his own against the official drivers from Penske. The latter are almost all from GT backgrounds, while the British team has chosen to field experts in sports prototypes.

Beautiful cars, great drivers, an unprecedented calendar…a crazy season awaits endurance lovers (and even motorsport enthusiasts) !