According to a report in the UK Guardian newspaper, Jenson Button has secured a deal with McLaren Mercedes to drive for the team for the next three Formula One seasons, in a deal worth £6 million a year to the newly-crowned 2009 F1 champion.
According to the report, Button has agreed terms which will see him partner fellow hyped-up Brit Lewis Hamilton in a terrifyingly-marketable 'British superteam' from 2010, after deciding to leave the Brawn GP team to double his earnings with McLaren.
The Guardian article quotes a source close to Button as saying of Button's tour of the McLaren facilities on Friday that: "I think Jenson liked what he saw and they liked him too."
The move has been rumoured for a number of weeks, since it became clear that the Brawn team were unwilling to offer Button the contract that he wanted for 2010 and beyond, but even today when the buyout of Brawn by Mercedes was agreed, the smart money seemed to be on Button ironing out his differences and staying with the team he secured the 2009 title with just a month ago.
With the deal agreed but not yet signed, Brawncedes chief executive Nick Fry remained adamant that his team could keep hold of Button, despite the new Mercedes owners reported to prefer an all-German lineup of Nico Rosberg and Nick Heidfeld.
When asked about Heidfeld's links with a race seat, Fry insisted that: "I can confidently say that [speculation] is totally incorrect – Mercedes is an international company. Clearly a German driver would be nice for them but we don't need two German drivers, that's not the intent.
"I hope Jenson is still with us next season. We've been together for a good few years now and we have succeeded in winning the world championship together and we want Jenson to be with us. But we have to recognise that Formula One is not divorced from the rest of the world. We have worked within a budget [and] if we spend in one area then we cannot spend in another area."
The news of Button's tentative deal with McLaren comes on the day that the Woking team secured an extension to their engine deal with Mercedes, despite losing their role as the 'works' Mercedes team. McLaren today announced that they would be supplied by Mercedes until 2015 at the earliest, meaning that the team should still be a frontrunner next season, assuming they get the car right this time.
Recently, former F1 champion Niki Lauda had poured cold water on Button's McLaren plan, saying that: "I think Jenson needs to be very certain that he wants to go into a team which Hamilton has very much made his own."
Fellow former F1 champion Sir Jackie Stewart agreed with Lauda, saying that Button would be "putting his head in the tiger's den" if he was to take on Hamilton head-to-head in the team that the 2008 champion has moulded around him since his arrival in the sport in 2007.
Nevertheless, it now seems certain that Button will choose not to heed that advice, and will attempt to become the first British F1 champion to secure back-to-back titles by switching teams in the process.
The news that Button is pencilled in next to the vacant McLaren seat also means bad news for 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen. Earlier in the season, the Finn claimed that he would only consider staying in the sport if it was with McLaren, and with that option seemingly gone, and his name not seemingly in the picture at Mercedes, the former champion would be left with no realistically competitive option for 2010.
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