Button could join the elite club of F1 drivers in 2024

Jenson Button, 2009 world champion, will start a new chapter in his career: he will spend a full season in endurance racing, driving the Porsche 963 hypercar of the British team Jota. Of course, one of the most important events of the season in the WEC was and remains the 24-hour race at Le Mans, and in theory Jenson (who turned 44 yesterday) has a chance to join the elite club of Formula 1 drivers who could contributing to their championship titles and victory at Le Mans.

There are only five such people in the history of Formula 1, and the championship’s official website listed everyone by name.

Mike Hawthorne

Mike Hawthorn competed in Formula 1 in the 1950s and, like many drivers of that time, successfully combined this with participation in other competitions, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

He first started this marathon in 1953 with a Ferrari 340 MM sports car, but the crew of Hawthorne and Giuseppe Farina were disqualified because the mechanic added brake fluid to the braking system at a pit stop earlier than allowed by the regulations . .

But two years later, Mike Hawthorn returned to Le Mans – already with the Jaguar factory team. In the early stages of the race he battled the likes of Eugenio Castellotti in a Ferrari and Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes.

But then a tragedy occurred that will forever remain one of the darkest pages in the history of motor racing: as Hawthorne slowed down and was about to make a pit stop, Briton Lance McLean, who was driving behind him, turned into an Austin-Healey, his trajectory. , avoiding a collision and crashing into the car at full speed in his Pierre Levegh’s Mercedes.

After this, the Frenchman’s car flew into a crowd of spectators, killing the driver and more than eighty other spectators. However, the race continued and Hawthorne’s crew won. During the subsequent investigation, it was determined that none of their riders were responsible for the incident.

Hawthorne started three more times at Le Mans, including on the podium. He last competed in the classic endurance race at the Sarthe Circuit in 1958, the same season he won the Formula 1 title. But the following year, Mike Hawthorn died in a car accident at the age of 29.

Phil Hill

American Phill Hill was another Ferrari driver who successfully competed in both Formula 1 and endurance racing. He competed at Le Mans in both the 1950s and 1960s, driving Ferrari cars eight times. The first four attempts ended in retirement, but in 1958 he won this race.

Together with Belgian Olivier Gendebien, Hill went on to win Le Mans twice more as part of the Maranello team – in 1961 and 1962. Phill Hill also won the Formula 1 title in 1961, although this happened against the backdrop of tragic circumstances: his closest rival and Scuderia teammate Wolfgang von Trips was killed in a terrible accident in Monza, which also killed several spectators.

Jochen Rindt

In the mid-1960s, Jochen Rindt competed at Le Mans four times, and these races ended for him, as in the case of Phil Hill, in retirement or victory. He won the marathon on his second attempt in 1965, driving a Ferrari for the North American Racing Team with Masten Gregory. The following year he raced in the famous Ford GT40 and in 1967 in the Porsche 907, but in both cases he failed to finish.

By the way, Rindt and Gregory’s victory remained Ferrari’s last achievement in the general classification of the 24 Hours of Le Mans for a long time, and last year Antonio Giovinazii, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado repeated that success. behind the wheel of the Ferrari 499P hypercar.

Rindt had competed in Formula 1 since 1964, taking his first victory with Lotus in 1969 and winning five more Grands Prix in 1970, but his life was tragically interrupted during the Monza race weekend. However, the points scored were enough to retain the world champion title that year – posthumously – with the Austrian.

Graham Hill

Graham Hill remains the owner of a unique achievement that no one has been able to repeat for more than half a century. Only he could achieve the Triple Crown: he won the Monaco Grand Prix, the Indy 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

At Monte Carlo, Hill won five times and was nicknamed “Mr. Monaco”, in 1966 he won the Indianapolis classic and on his 10th attempt in 1972 he topped the podium at Le Mans with Henri Pescarolo. They then won with the French sports prototype Matra-Simca MS670.

At the time, he had already won two world titles in Formula 1, and three years later, at the age of 46, he died in a plane crash while returning from the testing period.

Fernando Alonso

Fernando Alonso has repeatedly said he aims to repeat Graham Hill’s performance, and he has already claimed victories in Monaco and Le Mans. He attempted to win the Indy 500 in 2017 and had a real shot at success, but the car let him down and he didn’t finish.

In 2018, Alonso won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Toyota factory team – his teammates were Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima. A year later they won again at Le Mans with the same line-up, and in 2020 Fernando tried a completely different discipline: he drove the Dakar rally raid and took 13th place.

And now the two-time world champion is back in Formula 1 and last season he added eight podiums to his list of achievements, and this was a real breakthrough for the Aston Martin team.

In more than seventy years of Formula 1 history, more than twenty world champions have competed at Le Mans, from Juan Manuel Fangio in the 1950s to Jenson Button, who rode a marathon at Le Mans with the Garage 56 team last year. the Sarthe circuit in a NASCAR car, only slightly adapted taking into account the specificities of the WEC. Admittedly, together with Jimmy Johnson and Mike Rockenfeller, he rode outside the competition in a special “Innovative” class.

Overall, Button will have another go this year, and who knows, maybe he can join the elite club of F1 champions who have also achieved success at Le Mans. It should be added that Max Verstappen, winner of three titles, is already speaking about his desire to participate in the legendary daily marathon in the future. His father, Jos Verstappen, also raced there and took first place in the LMP2 class in 2008.