Formula 1 Legend Jenson Button Talks Rolex, Racing and His Favorite Cars

There are billions of drivers in this world … but only a handful can compare to Jenson Button.

I certainly can’t, at least. And unless your name happens to be Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso — the latter two of whom he counts among his former teammates — odds are good you don’t count amongst his equals, either. The 43-year-old Button rose to fame in Formula 1, where he competed for a whopping 17 seasons — starting in 2000 and sticking around until 2016. In that time, he racked up 15 wins, the crowning achievement being winning the Drivers’ World Championship in 2009.

Gear Patrol sat down with the F1 champ at The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering, during Monterey Car Week, where he was in attendance as both a recently crowned Rolex testimonee — the brand’s term for its hand-picked ambassadors from the highest echelons of racing, golf and music, an honor to which Button was named in 2022 — and as a man revealing his new $2 million Lotus Evija electric hypercar to the world for the first time.

His ties to Rolex, Button says, share some commonality with the sport that made him famous. “Rolex is a luxury brand, and Formula One is a luxury brand, kind of,” he says. “So it works really well.” Watches, like race cars, involve packing intricate machinery into a very precise form with minimal waste. “When you’re very limited with what you can do with a package, it’s all about attention to detail.”

Rolex

Lotus Cars

At left, Button at the Lotus stand at The Quail in front of the new Type 66 track car; at right, Button’s bespoke Evija.

While he certainly seems keen to take his 2,011-hp Lotus for a spin soon, however, Button made clear that many of his favorite cars to drive — for example, his fully restored Jaguar E-Type Series 1.5 convertible — pack less power. “That, for me, is my go to, if I just want to get away in the canyons. You don’t have to drive quick,” he says. “You’re probably doing 35 miles an hour, and it just feels amazing. Tires squealing, the sound of the engine…”

His extensive car collection also includes an aluminum-bodied Jaguar XK 120 that raced at Le Mans under the control of Sir Stirling Moss and a Jaguar C-Type driven by Juan Manuel Fangio. “I have a lot of Jags right now, for some reason,” he says.

“I love classic cars at the moment, because I can tinker with them,” he explains. But it’s more than just their ease of maintenance that attracts him. Modern super-high-performance cars, he says, are getting too powerful for the road. “You can’t push it to the limit and get that buzz, because it’s too dangerous.”

“I have a Tesla — and everyone laughs when I say that, ‘a Tesla?’ — but it’s just great. It’s the quickest car I’ve ever had from A to B. It’s $50,000 … and I hate it. I hate to like it; you look at the build quality, it’s terrible. But it’s just easy; it’s just a tool. And it’s quicker than most of the cars I have; it’s faster than most of the cars here, naught to 60, [or] in the lanes,” he says, waving his hand at the collection of classic sports cars and vintage supercars clustered below.

“Now, I don’t buy cars because it’s the quickest thing. It’s the experience of the car.”

Rolex

Still, that’s just for the street. “When it comes to racing, it’s about competition,” he says. Earlier this year, he competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans from behind the wheel of a very unconventional car — a NASCAR Chevy Camaro ZL1, which he described in enthusiastic terms as “a weapon.” (It was far from his first spin in Ricky Bobby’s shoes; he’s run three NASCAR Cup races this year.) “They’re really different than what I’m used to, those beasts,” he says, “but I’ve really loved it.”

Next up: the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s 10-hour Petit Le Mans race in October, where he’ll be piloting Porsche’s 963 prototype racer, as well as dabbling in historic racing at the Goodwood Revival in September, where this year he’ll drive his aforementioned C-Type.

“I have to race,” he says. “I can’t not race. I’m a better person if I’m competing.”

TOM O’NEAL

One type of racing that doesn’t really appear to get his engine running, however, is the type without engines. “I think [Formula E] has its place,” he says, but adds that its appeal, owes partly to how easy it is to attend due to its urban-centric calendar. “It’s great that they’re able to race in cities. If it wasn’t in cities, it wouldn’t work.”

“Do I think it’s the future of motorsports? I hope not,” he says. “I always find it weird when motor racing doesn’t have a noise, as that’s a big part of motor racing for me.”

“I personally hope that it’s biofuels, and I think there’s a good case for it,” he adds, referring to the renewable synthetic fuels being developed by Porsche and others . “I love that we have all these engineers working on different technologies — EVs, hydrogen, biofuels. And in the end, we’ll work out what’s best.”

As for his favorite road? Well, that’s one detail I won’t share. Partly because Button lives at the foot of it and we want to protect his privacy … but also because, well, we don’t want the word getting out before I have a chance to drive it.

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