Button in gold as he signs up for world endurance season

2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button will race in a full season of the World Endurance Championship in 2024.

The Sky Sports F1 pundit has signed up to drive in the eight-round season, which features the Le Mans 24 Hours as its centrepiece, in the Hertz-backed Jota team’s Porsche 963 as part of the British team’s newly-expanded WEC hypercar programme.

Button, 43, who has has driven in an array of motorsport categories in addition to his TV work since retiring from F1 in 2017, will share driving duties in the team’s #38 car at each WEC event with fellow Briton Phil Hanson and Denmark’s Oliver Rasmussen.

The team’s two Porsches race in gold.

The Jota Porsche 963 that Jenson Button will be driving in 2024, in testing action in November

“I’m thrilled to be racing with Hertz Team JOTA in the 2024 World Endurance Championship alongside my team-mates Oliver Rasmussen and Phil Hanson,” said Button.

“Both already have a lot of experience in endurance racing and that is key. Endurance racing is about teamwork and there is no better team than Hertz Team JOTA to be taking on the big manufacturers in Hypercars.

“I’m already looking forward to the first race in Qatar but also know there’s a lot of work to be done so that we arrive prepared.”

Frederic Lequien, the CEO of WEC, described it as “an honour to have Jenson Button – a hugely successful driver across many racing disciplines – competing full-time in the WEC next year”.

The WEC season starts in Qatar on March 2, with the Le Mans 24 Hours on June 15-16. The calendar also features a race in November at Brazil’s Interlagos circuit, where Button won his F1 title.

Former Ferrari Academy driver Callum Ilott this week signed to partner fellow Briton Will Stevens, who has been with Jota since 2022, and France’s Norman Nato in Jota’s other car, the #12.

Button, a 15-time grand prix winner, has twice raced at Le Mans, in 2018 and 2023, while he also competed in three additional rounds of WEC in the former season and achieved a podium finish in China.

Since retiring from F1 six years ago after a stellar 306-race engineer, Button has driven in numerous motorsport disciplines – including endurance, GT, rallycross, Extreme E, and NASCAR – and won Japan’s Super GT championship in 2018.

Button first drove the Porsche 963 he will race in next year at October’s Petit Le Mans endurance event in Georgia, USA.

In January, he will also race in the Daytona 24 Hours.