Button joins SMP Racing for 2018/19 WEC campaign

Button will make his WEC debut in the French endurance classic in one of SMP's two AER-powered, Dallara-built BR1s alongside Russian duo Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin.

It follows his first steps into sportscar racing with Honda in Super GT, which Button is contesting full-time this season after making his debut in last year's Suzuka 1000km.

"As you can imagine it's always been a dream of mine to race at Le Mans, I think it's every driver's dream to take part and hopefully go on to clinch that win at Le Mans, and I'm definitely no different," said the 2009 F1 champion.

"My teammates will be Aleshin and Petrov, who I know very well from his racing in F1, and Mikhail from his IndyCar exploits.

"We go to Le Mans to fight for the win. Every driver aims to win every race they go in for, but I think we really do have a good chance of being competitive at Le Mans."

Button is expected to contest every race on the 2018/19 WEC schedule with the exception of next week's Spa opener, which partially clashes with the Fuji Super GT round.

Petrov and Aleshin will race at Spa as a duo, while Stephane Sarrazin, Matevos Isaakyan and Egor Orudzhev form the line-up in the sister #17 BR1-AER.

Button's signing completes the LMP1 grid for Le Mans, which is as follows:

No.	Team	Car	Drivers
1	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion R13-Gibson	Andre Lotterer  Neel Jani  Bruno Senna
3	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion R13-Gibson	Thomas Laurent  Mathias Beche  Gustavo Menezes
4	ByKolles Racing Team	ENSO CLM P1/01-Nismo	Oliver Webb  Dominik Kraihamer  Tom Dillmann
5	Manor TRSM Racing	Ginetta G60-LT-P1-Mecachrome	Charlie Robertson  Dean Stoneman  Leo Roussel
6	Manor TRSM Racing	Ginetta G60-LT-P1-Mecachrome	Oliver Rowland  Alex Brundle  Oliver Turvey
7	Toyota Racing	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	Mike Conway  Kamui Kobayashi  Jose Maria Lopez
8	Toyota Racing	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	Sebastien Buemi  Kazuki Nakajima  Fernando Alonso
10	DragonSpeed	BR1-Gibson	Ben Hanley  Henrik Hedman  Renger van der Zande
11	SMP Racing	BR1-AER	Mikhail Aleshin  Vitaly Petrov  Jenson Button
17	SMP Racing	BR1-AER	Egor Orudzhev  Matevos Isaakyan  Stephane Sarrazin

#11 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1: Mikhail Aleshin, Vitaly Petrov

Photo by: JEP / LAT Images