What do Formula One drivers do when they’re done competing in Formula One? The answer varies, but when it comes to former world champions, it basically comes down to “whatever they want.”
Take Jenson Button, for example. The 2009 Formula One World Champion stepped out of the cockpit at McLaren at the end of last season, and has since only been taking the plum assignments.
Last week, for example, he came back out of retirement only to race in the Monaco Grand Prix and let his former wingman Fernando Alonso see what it was like to race in the Indy 500 – under Honda power, of course.
Now it’ll be Jenson’s turn to try a different kind of racing – namely Super GT, Japan’s ever-popular sports/touring car series, where he’ll be driving a GT500-spec Honda NSX. And not in just any race, either: Jenson will be driving this August in the Suzuka 1000 km race, the longest and most prominent round on the calendar and Japan’s equivalent, you might say, to the 24-hour races at Le Mans or Daytona.
It’s no coincidence that he’ll be driving a Honda there, either. Button spent the bulk of his F1 career driving for the Japanese automaker’s previous works team, and is seen as having been instrumental in bringing it back into F1 for its current partnership with McLaren. For the 620-mile race on the Suzuka circuit, he’ll be driving for Team Mugen and sharing the car with regular drivers Hidekah Mutoh and Daisuke Nakasima – neither of which has won a GT500-class race yet. Honda has won the race three times this decade with the previous HSV-010 GT in 2010, 2011, and 2013, while the Lexus RC F has dominated for the past three years. It’ll be interesting to see if Button can help it clinch the race this year.