The 43-year-old will undertake a full season of racing for the first time since his sophomore campaign in the Super GT Series with the Kunimitsu Honda team in 2019 in one of the pair of Hertz Team Jota Porsche 963 LMDhs.
He will share the British team’s #38 Hypercar entry with fellow Briton Phil Hanson and Oliver Rasmussen.
“I’m thrilled to racing with Hertz Team Jota in the 2024 WEC alongside my team-mates Oliver and Phil,” said the 2009 world champion.
“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 Hypercar.”
Photo by: Shameem Fahath
#38 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche 963 : Antonio Felix Da Costa, Will Stevens, Yifei Ye
Button has been confirmed with Jota’s expanded Hypercar attack after a period of intense speculation and subsequent confirmation from the team that it was in talks with him.
He made no secret of his desire to race a prototype in the build-up to his sportscar return at the Le Mans 24 Hours this year, when he piloted Hendrick Motorsport’s Garage 56 entry with a modified Chevrolet Camaro LS1 NASCAR Cup car.
He described the drive alongside Jimmie Johnson and Mike Rockenfeller as “a great way to get back to Le Mans”, a race which he previously contested in SMP Racing’s BR Engineering-AER BR1 in 2018.
“I would like to race there in a Hypercar: I still have the hunger, I still have the fitness, the reactions and when you have that, why not?” he said.
The Briton subsequently made his race debut in a current generation prototype at October’s Petit Le Mans IMSA SportsCar Championship finale at Road Atlanta, driving the JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963.
Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images
#40: Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti, Acura ARX-06, GTP: Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz, Colton Herta, Jenson Button
He will make his second IMSA start at the next month’s season-opening Daytona 24 Hours as the fourth driver in one of WTRAndretti’s Acura ARX-06 LMDhs ahead of the start of his WEC campaign in Qatar at the start of March.
Button has been touted as part of a Jota ‘superteam’ in which he would be joined by fellow F1 champion Sebastian Vettel and Robert Kubica.
Negotiations between Vettel and Jota are understood to have broken down, while Kubica will race the customer Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercar to be run by AF Corse as a satellite entry to the two factory cars.
WEC boss Frederic Lequien described the presence of Button on the grid next year as an “honour” for the series.
The second Jota Porsche, #12, will raced by team regular Will Stevens and new signings Callum Ilott and Norman Nato.
>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Motorsport.com – https://www.motorsport.com/wec/news/button-to-make-wec-return-racing-jota-porsche-in-2024/10558258/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=RSS-ALL&utm_term=News&utm_content=www
