Button grew up in Vobster, Somerset, the fourth child of former rallycross driver John Button. His father introduced him to karting at age seven, giving him a Zip go-kart as a Christmas present in 1987. Button thrived immediately, winning all 34 races of the 1991 British Cadet Kart Championship with team Wright Karts. He went on to become the youngest driver and first Briton to claim the European Super A Championship, and won the Ayrton Senna Memorial Cup at the 1997 Japanese World Cup.
Moving into car racing in 1998, Button won the British Formula Ford Championship with nine victories and claimed the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch. The following year he finished third overall in the British Formula 3 International Series, earning him the Autosport BRDC Award and a McLaren F1 test.
On Christmas Eve 1999, Williams team founder Frank Williams called Button to offer him a race seat. The move made him Britain's youngest ever F1 driver at the time, surpassing the record held by Stirling Moss. A sixth-place finish at the 2000 Brazilian Grand Prix made him the youngest driver in history to score a championship point. Williams replaced him mid-season with Juan Pablo Montoya, loaning Button to Benetton.
At Benetton in 2001 and its successor Renault in 2002, Button improved significantly as the team gained competitive equipment. Despite a strong 2002 season that showed clear race pace ahead of teammate Jarno Trulli, he was replaced by Fernando Alonso. He joined British American Racing (BAR) for 2003, where he gradually built his reputation, finishing third in the 2004 World Drivers' Championship and helping BAR to second in the Constructors' title.
After BAR was renamed Honda, Button claimed his maiden Grand Prix victory at a rain-affected 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix starting from fourteenth — his 113th career start. Two difficult years followed as the Honda RA107 and RA108 proved uncompetitive. Honda's withdrawal from F1 in December 2008 left Button without a drive for 2009.
In February 2009, Ross Brawn led a management buyout of Honda to create Brawn GP, recruiting Button as driver. The Brawn BGP 001 featured an innovative double-diffuser aerodynamic package that proved dramatically faster than rivals in the early races. Button won six of the first seven Grands Prix and led the championship from the opening round, clinching the title at the Brazilian Grand Prix with one race remaining. Brawn GP simultaneously won the Constructors' Championship, one of the most remarkable stories in F1 history given the team had formed from the ashes of Honda's withdrawal just months earlier.
Button joined McLaren for 2010, partnering Lewis Hamilton. He won the Canadian Grand Prix in 2011 after recovering from two collisions to overtake Sebastian Vettel on the final lap in wet conditions, finishing runner-up in the championship that year with three victories. His final four seasons with McLaren yielded no victories as the Honda engine partnership from 2015 proved chronically underpowered. He retired from full-time F1 at the end of 2016, making a one-off return at the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix to deputise for Fernando Alonso. In 306 career starts Button won 15 races, took 50 podiums, and scored 1,235 championship points.
Button was celebrated for an exceptionally smooth driving style, described by journalist Mark Hughes as having "a fantastic feel for how much momentum can be taken into a corner." His sensitivity allowed him to preserve tyres during long stints and excel in changeable wet-weather conditions. His smooth inputs produced less tyre heat on a single lap, occasionally hurting his qualifying pace, but gave him strong race consistency and fuel efficiency. He braked with his left foot from the start of the 2000 season, dragging the pedal to modulate deceleration and stabilize the car on corner entry.
Button made his Super GT debut in 2017 and drove the full 2018 season with Team Kunimitsu in a Honda NSX-GT alongside Naoki Yamamoto. They entered the final race of the season equal on points with their rivals and held off the challenge to win the GT500 title by three points, making Button the first rookie champion in the series since 2005.
In endurance racing he competed in the FIA World Endurance Championship from 2024 to 2025 with Team Jota, driving a Porsche 963 and then a Cadillac V-Series.R alongside Earl Bamber and Sebastien Bourdais. He achieved a career-best second-place finish at the 2025 6 Hours of Sao Paulo before retiring from professional racing after the 8 Hours of Bahrain that year, citing family commitments.
Button's 2009 championship remains one of F1's most celebrated underdog triumphs, and the story was the subject of the 2023 Disney+ miniseries Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. He was inducted into the FIA Hall of Fame in 2017, appointed MBE in the 2010 New Year Honours, and is a five-time winner of the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy as the most successful British driver in a season.