Jenson Button turns 44 in three days, but he is full of energy and ready to take on a new challenge. In fact, he has already accepted it, as he becomes the first person to drive two different hypercars in the same season. endurance racing.
On January 27, Jenson will make his first career start at the 24 Hours of Daytona, driving the Acura ARX-06 GTP sports prototype of the GTP/LMDh class. In December we talked about his participation in official tests at the American Daytona International Speedway together with the WTRAndretti team, founded on the basis of two teams: Wayne Taylor Racing and Andretti.
But the qualifying races will take place on January 24, so Jenson is now actively preparing for his debut in Daytona – this 24-hour marathon, like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, is also considered one of the classic races.
But within a year, Button will compete in the WEC as part of British team Jota, driving the Porsche 963 hypercar.
Jenson has been a fan of this brand for a long time and in his garage there are cars of this brand, including the legendary 911 model.
“I used to have forty or fifty cars, but now my collection is smaller,” said the 2009 world champion in an interview with Forbes. “It was never possible to gather it in one place, and I just looked at these cars, and since it was not possible to drive them all, I decided that there was no point.
I sold most of the collection and started driving what I wanted, such as a Jaguar Type 8 with racing clutch and a Porsche 911 from tuning studio Singer.”
The partner of the 24 Hours of Daytona is traditionally the Swiss watch brand Rolex and Button is one of the ambassadors of this brand and of course wears such a watch.
“Timing is everything for a driver,” he noted. – The essence of racing is to complete a lap as quickly as possible or get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. You always try to improve your result by hundredths of a second, or maybe even thousandths. You’re always thinking about time, and it’s never enough.
Time is a very important resource for me, although I find it difficult to find the right balance because I spend so much time outdoors.”
When asked to talk about the moment in his life when time dragged on the longest, Button recalled the events of August 6, 2006, when he was still a racer for the factory Honda team: “It seemed to me that the race in which I got my first win in Formula 1, it took forever. This was during the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2006. The race only lasted an hour and a half, but it felt like it had lasted five hours. And then I won.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
