Jenson Button will partner Lewis Hamilton at McLaren next season in an All-British lineup of champions, the Formula One team said yesterday.
The announcement completes an astonishing year for 29-year-old Button, who did not know if he had a future in the sport last December when his then-employers Honda pulled out for financial reasons.
Button went on to win six of the first seven races of the season for Brawn GP, the team that emerged from the remains of Honda.
“It’s always a difficult decision to leave a team when you’ve been there for so long. But life is all about challenges — and, most important of all, it’s about challenging yourself,” Button said.
“So, although I won the World Championship with Brawn GP, and I’ll never forget that, I was always adamant that I wanted to continue to set myself fresh challenges,” he said.
“You can’t help but be affected by this team’s phenomenal history. McLaren is one of the greats of world sport, and its achievements and list of past champions read like a Who’s Who of Formula One,” Button said.
The signing means Mercedes-powered McLaren will have two champion drivers for the first time since 1989 when France’s Alain Prost and Brazilian Ayrton Senna formed an explosive pairing at the Woking-based team.
It will also be the first time that a team has started the new season with a lineup featuring the most recent two successive world champions and the first pairing of British champions since Graham Hill joined Jim Clark at Lotus in 1968.
While Button will be well rewarded financially for his decision, with reports suggesting a pay packet of about £6 million (US$10.09 million) a year, he also faces the toughest challenge of his career.
Hamilton, 24, has been nurtured by McLaren for more than a decade and has made the team his own since bursting on to the scene as a sensational rookie in 2007.
“It’s Lewis Hamilton’s patch, it’s his territory and he’s made it his own. He knows everybody and knows where all the green buttons are to press,” former McLaren driver turned television commentator Martin Brundle told the BBC.
■EX-CHAMP GIVES F1 A MISS
REUTERS, LONDON
Kimi Raikkonen will focus on rallying next year after failing to reach a deal with McLaren, the 2007 world champion’s manager said yesterday.
“They couldn’t afford him,” David Robertson, who manages the Finn with his son Steve, told the BBC. “It wasn’t in his interests to race for what they were offering so he’s going to go rallying instead.”
“He wants to be back in F1 in 2011 but with all the money he has earned, he doesn’t want to go in a medium-type team for money,” he said.
“The same criteria would apply as this year. He’d only go where he feels he has the chance of the world championship,” he said.
Raikkonen spent five years at McLaren before joining Ferrari at the end of 2006 and winning the title in his first season there.
He has now been ousted at the Italian team by Spain’s double world champion Fernando Alonso, despite having a year to run on his contract.
With a payoff in his pocket, he had already cast doubt on his Formula One future and said last month that any contract he signed would have to allow him to continue his rallying activities.
The 30-year-old, whose motivation has been repeatedly questioned, competed in this year’s Finnish round of the world rally championship in a Fiat after also entering three non-championship events.
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