Breaking News - Button to join Hamilton at McLaren

Filed in archive News on November 18, 2009

News that Brawn were not able to fund a new wage deal for champion Jenson button and keep him in the team has received mixed reactions from racing fans, not least British ones. It has been said that this would create a new super-team with the two most recent champions, and the first consecutive British champions for forty years, racing together at McLaren.

A few watched Button through his, shall we say, less successful years from 2006-2008 with Honda, and recognised the driver as one of the most consistent in the sport. Compare this to the champion of 2008, Lewis Hamilton, who won with the best car under him, who appears to drive with much more gusto and a little less regard for the rules (though this, of course, makes for an exciting championship, and even the naysayers couldn’t help but congratulate his win after it seemed the whole of the F1 governing body had been trying to sabotage his attempts). We wonder then, after the less than civilised rivalry between Hamilton and McLaren’s apparent first-driver Fernando Alonso in Lewis’ first year with the team, and, although always portrayed with a jovial front, the underlying competitiveness between team mates of three years Button and Rubens Barrichello (having driven alongside each other with Honda), who would McLaren put most of their efforts into? Although this appears a rhetorical question now, any motorsport fan knows that, when it comes down to making to tactical decisions of who, in the rain, comes in on an equal fuel tank to change tyres first, it suddenly become a lot more obvious who, in first and second place, should be overtaking who.