Jenson Button has sampled an eclectic mix of racing series in the past few years since his last full-time racing programme in Super GT concluded in 2019.
Now 43, the 2009 Formula 1 world champion had a disappointing British GT cameo at Silverstone in 2020 as hidden glitches dogged his McLaren 720S GT3. He then made a one-off appearance for his own JBXE team in the inaugural round of the all-electric Extreme E series in 2021, continued the off-road theme by entering two Nitro RallyCross rounds in 2022 and has made three road course appearances in this year’s NASCAR Cup Series alongside a return to the Le Mans 24 Hours in a modified Chevrolet Camaro Cup car.
Having stood his ground against the good ol’ boys in NASCAR, setting the sixth fastest lap on his most recent outing at Indianapolis amid what he called a “messy” race, Button isn’t afraid of throwing himself into a challenge. And he'll be embarking on his latest one this weekend by jumping in for the final round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship at Road Atlanta, the 10-hour Petit Le Mans, for his debut in the North American series.
Button isn’t a newcomer to prototype sportcar racing by any means, having contested four races in the 2019 World Endurance Championship with SMP Racing’s BR Engineering BR1 LMP1 machine, including that year’s Le Mans. But the JDC-Miller Porsche 963 he’ll share with Mike Rockenfeller and Tijmen van der Helm is an altogether different beast, which Button admitted in a recent interview with the IMSA series website had been “a bit of a shock to the system” in his first 10 laps of testing at the fast, flowing Road Atlanta circuit.
“Getting used to downforce cars again and a circuit that is fast, flowing, blind and unforgiving was interesting,” he remarked. “But to be fair, I loved it. Absolutely loved the challenge. I feel at home driving high-downforce cars. It’s in my makeup. It’s what I’ve done for two decades.”
Button showed he was adept at learning high downforce sportscars by winning the Super GT title at the end of his first full season in 2018 with Naoki Yamamoto. And racing with hybrid technology will be familiar too, with Button’s final three full seasons in F1 and last hurrah at Monaco in 2017 coming during the V6 turbo era when he played a key role in aiding Honda through its traumatic return.
Source: Autosport