Button began karting at age eight and quickly excelled, winning all 34 races of the 1991 British Cadet Kart Championship and becoming the youngest driver and first Briton to claim the European Super A Championship in 1997. He moved to British Formula Ford in 1998, winning the championship with nine victories and also taking the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch.
In the 1999 British Formula Three season, Button won three times and finished third overall. That autumn he contested the Macau Grand Prix, finishing second — losing by just 0.035 seconds to Darren Manning. The performance, alongside his F3 season, caught the attention of the Formula One paddock and led directly to Frank Williams offering him a race seat for 2000, making Button Britain's youngest ever Formula One driver at the time.
Button made his F1 debut with Williams in 2000, scoring a point on his second race weekend in Brazil. He moved to Benetton (which became Renault) in 2001-02, then joined British American Racing (BAR) in 2003, where he took ten podiums in 2004 and finished third in the championship. After two further seasons at BAR — which was renamed Honda — he scored his first victory at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix after 113 starts, coming from fourteenth on the grid in wet conditions.
Honda withdrew from Formula One in December 2008 following the financial crisis. Ross Brawn led a management buyout to create Brawn GP, and Button signed on for 2009. The team's BGP 001, built around a double diffuser that exploited an aerodynamic regulation loophole, proved devastatingly quick early in the season. Button won six of the first seven races and led the championship from start to finish, securing the title at the Brazilian Grand Prix and helping Brawn GP win the Constructors' Championship as well.
Button moved to McLaren in 2010, partnering Lewis Hamilton. He won the Canadian and Hungarian Grands Prix in 2011 en route to finishing runner-up in the championship with 270 points. After two further competitive seasons, McLaren's partnership with Honda from 2015 onward produced uncompetitive machinery and Button's results declined sharply. He retired at the end of 2016, making a one-off return at the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix to stand in for the Indianapolis 500-bound Fernando Alonso.
Button was known for a smooth, precise driving style that generated minimal tyre wear and excelled in wet conditions. He braked with his left foot, favoured early corner entry under braking, and maintained balance through careful pedal modulation. His approach was particularly effective in changeable weather — three of his most celebrated victories (Canada 2011, Hungary 2006 and 2011) came in rain-affected races where his car control set him apart.
In 2018 Button raced in Super GT for Honda's Team Kunimitsu alongside Naoki Yamamoto, winning the GT500 title by three points at the season finale — the first rookie champion in the series since 2005. He subsequently competed in endurance racing, including two seasons in the FIA World Endurance Championship with Team Jota, and ran three NASCAR Cup Series races in 2023 for Rick Ware Racing.
Jenson Button was appointed MBE in 2010 for services to motorsport. He won the Autosport Rookie of the Year award in 2000, the BRDC Gold Star in 2004 and 2009, and was inducted into the FIA Hall of Fame in 2017. Brawn GP's unlikely 2009 championship campaign — built from a team that had no corporate owner just months before the season began — became the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary series Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. His near-win at Macau in 1999, within a whisker of what could have been a famous victory, was an early signal of the talent that would eventually reach the sport's summit a decade later.