Jenson Button to restart Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg rivalry as Brit back at the wheel

Lewis Hamilton: Jenson Button makes joke about F1 star

Jenson Button is to reignite his rivalry with fellow F1 champions Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as he gets back behind the wheel. Button is the third F1 champion to launch a team in the Extreme E off-road series – and will race his own car.

Button’s JBXE team will compete in the new electric championship, which has been launched to highlight climate change issues.

He joins Hamilton and Rosberg in entering a team for the competition’s inaugural season, in which electric SUVs will compete in extreme environments across the world.

But the 2009 F1 champion will go one step further than his former grid rivals by driving his car in the championship.

And Motorsport fans will relish the chance to see him reprise his rivalry with Hamilton, with whom he had a spiky relationship when they were McLaren team-mates between 2010 and 2012.

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Announcing his move, Button told Sky Sports: “There are three F1 world champions that have a team in Extreme E.

“There are multiple world champion rally drivers, rally-cross drivers, Dakar champions, off-road champions from the States… it’s an insane line-up.

“It’s five races around the world in areas that have been affected by climate change and that have big environmental impact from climate change.

“The great thing is that we will be racing in those places, so it’s bringing awareness, which is the whole point of this category, and there will also be scientists on the ground researching those areas and hopefully learning from them so we can put it right in the future.”

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The championship will visit regions which have been affected by climate change issues – including arctic, desert, rainforest, glacier and coastal locations.

Each team will have a male and a female driver, with races comprised of two 16km laps. Hamilton’s team-mate will be announced in the coming weeks.

Button recently rejoined F1 marque Williams as a special adviser.

And his move into Extreme E means he will now be plotting against old rival Hamilton on two fronts.

He and Hamiton created a British super-team at McLaren in 2010.

Button joined from Brawn GP as reigning world champion, and briefly unsettled Hamilton – with the two having a public fallout on social media in 2012 when Hamilton tweeted a picture of his team-mate’s top-secret telemetry.

It was Button who edged their McLaren rivalry, taking 672 points from their 58 races, compared to Hamilton’s tally of 657.

But of course Hamilton would go on to become arguably the sport’s greatest ever driver when he equalled Michael Schumacher’s record seven world championship titles last year.

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