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Button joins SMP Racing for 2018/19 WEC campaign
Ex-Formula 1 champion Jenson Button will race for the SMP Racing LMP1 team in the 2018/19 FIA World Endurance Championship season, starting with this year's Le Mans 24 Hours.
Jamie Klein
Edited: Apr 28, 2018, 7:36 AM
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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
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