BUTTON SET FOR BRITISH GT DEBUT AT SILVERSTONE
Jenson Button, the 2009 Formula 1 world champion, is due to make a one-off appearance in the final round of the British GT Championship at Silverstone next month.
The 15-time grand prix victor will drive a Mclaren 720S GT3 entered by the Jenson Team Rocket RJN squad he co-owns with RJN boss Bob Neville and lifelong friend Chris Buncombe, who will share the car with GT3 rookie Button.
Since concluding his F1 career with Mclaren at the 2017 Monaco GP, Button has mostly raced in the Japanese Super GT Championship, winning the title in 2018, and made a DTM cameo at last year’s
Hockenheim finale in his Super GT Honda NSX.
The three-hour Silverstone 500, which will be held behind closed doors on 8 November, will be Button’s first race on home soil since the 2018 World Endurance Championship round at the same track in an
SMP Racing BRE LMP1 car.
“This will be my first taste of a GT3 car but I’m really looking forward it,” he said. “It will be lovely to join our team and lining up in the Mclaren 720S with my best buddy Chris Buncombe. It’s great to come back and race on UK soil again, and a big thank you to our partners that have made this possible.”
Bronze-graded Buncombe, a Le Mans 24 Hours
LMP2 class winner in 2007, told Autosport that the race “was [Button’s] idea first and foremost” and the culmination of years of discussion about contesting an endurance race together.
“This was the first opportunity of getting on track and sharing a car together,” explained Buncombe, who has previously contested off-road races with Button in the US. “He doesn’t have any more grand prix commitments for TV this year, so it fitted on a weekend where he wasn’t committed. It worked out well.”
The pair will test at Silverstone later this month, and Buncombe said both would be taking the outing seriously, but stressed a full season in British GT next year is not on the cards. “We’re purely seeing it as a one-off appearance,” he said. “We’re both coming at it fairly green but with the same aspect in as far as if we want to do anything, we do the best job we can.”