F1 champion confirms retirement after 'unfair' decision

2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button has confirmed his official retirement from full-time racing, announcing his final professional race and the decision to finally call time on his racing career.

Button raced with fellow British star Lewis Hamilton at McLaren between 2010 and 2012, with it being a blockbuster pairing between the 2008 and 2009 world champions.

While Hamilton went off to Mercedes to win six more titles, Button saw out his career with the Woking-based outfit, eventually retiring from F1 in 2016. He then returned for a one-off race in 2017, where he stood in at the Monaco Grand Prix for Fernando Alonso, who was busy making his Indy500 debut.

That was the last that we saw of Button on the F1 grid, but he has since been involved in many other racing series across the globe, including the NASCAR Cup Series, the World Endurance Championship (WEC) and Super GT - GT500, a title that he won back in 2018.

Button has also been a regular contributor on Sky Sports F1, most recently at the United States Grand Prix, where he took up his usual place as a pundit.

In November, Button will race in the 8 Hours of Bahrain WEC race with Cadillac Hertz Team Jota, and he has now revealed that this will be his final professional race, as he looks to spend more time with his family.

In an interview with BBC Radio this week, Button said: "This will be my last race. I've always enjoyed Bahrain; I think it's a nice circuit and I'm going to enjoy it as much as possible, because this is the end of my professional racing career.

"I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with Jota in the WEC, but my life has simply become too busy," he explained. "It's not fair to the team or to myself to go into 2026 thinking I'll have enough time left."

Button chooses family over racing

Overall, Button's F1 career spanned 17 full seasons, and he claimed 15 grands prix victories and 50 podiums in that time.

His biggest success, of course, came in 2009 with the Brawn GP team, when he managed to complete the fairytale of a team born out of the ashes of the old Honda Racing team rising to claim double championship success.

The outfit were only in the sport for a single season, before Ross Brawn sold the team to Mercedes, which makes the achievements of Button and Rubens Barrichello even more special.

Button never quite managed to emulate that success with McLaren, although he did finish runner-up to Sebastian Vettel in 2011, beating team-mate Hamilton in the process.

After a solid career in motorsport across multiple disciplines, the 45-year-old has now confirmed that spending time with his family is his main motivation for giving up racing.

"My kids are four and six; in racing, you can easily be away from home for a week - you miss so much, and you never get that time back," he said.

"I feel like I've already missed a lot in recent years. That was fine - I knew that would happen - but I'm not prepared to do that for another season."

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