Instead of racing with McLaren-Honda next season, or switching to another team, the former world champion has opted to take a back seat.
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The 2009 world champion has been a key player in the 2017 driver market with Williams among the teams believed to have been interested in his services.
The 36-year-old Briton, world champion in 2009, announced yesterday that he was stepping out of his race seat with the team next year to be replaced by Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne.
The deal includes an option to return in 2018 as a race driver but a number of factors will have to come into play for that to happen.
“I would have loved to have seen him in Williams.a British driver in a British team has been a dream of mine”.
McLaren has supported Vandoorne’s career since he won the Formula Renault Eurocup title in 2012, and Dennis said he now expected Vandoorne to be a McLaren F1 driver for the long-term. But that keeping Button onboard for another two years is, basically, an insurance policy I guess there’s no doubt about it.
His replacement will be Stoffel Vandoorne. Neither, as it turns out, will Jenson Button.
“McLaren-Honda’s race driver line-up next season will be Fernando and Stoffel – a perfectly balanced mix of proven brilliance and huge potential”, said McLaren boss Ron Dennis.
“It’s an enormous honour to become a McLaren-Honda race driver, and I promise to work as hard as any Formula One driver ever has before”.
“In that case, they have Button who can step in again”.
But he could yet return to the grid in 2018 after revealing McLaren has an option to put him back in the auto. “This was an innovative way to provide the team with all the advantages of having Jenson in the team, complete with his abilities to drive if necessary, and give him what he wanted, which was a bit of relaxation time to enjoy some of the things that he hasn’t been able to enjoy to date”.
Jenson Button is unlikely to return to the track for McLaren after his 2017 sabbatical, according to Marc Surer.
“We fitted new tyres for the last two laps and I just went out and maximised the grip”.
“To be clear, I’m very definitely not retiring”, Button said, “I’m contracted for both 2017 and 2018, I intend to work hard on car-development, and I’m sure I’ll get behind the wheel of the new vehicle at some point”.
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“This was a circuit where we always knew we wouldn’t be competitive, but I think good times are coming our way from now on, as most of the remaining tracks on the calendar should better suit our auto”.
