The boss of Mercedes-Benz, Norbert Haug, has said that McLaren would be happy to accommodate Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton within the team for 2010, as the team looks set to reunite with it's old driver after the Finn is released by Ferrari.
Ferrari have all-but signed up Renault's Fernando Alonso for the 2010 season, and this is believed to have precipitated Raikkonen leaving the team, with the Finn in the closing stages of negotiating a release deal from his Ferrari contract in order to leave a year early.
The likelyhood seems to be that the 2007 champion will then reunite with the team he drove for from 2002 to 2006 for next season, with both Raikkonen and McLaren believed to be keen on the deal.
This would mean that Raikkonen would pair up with 2008 champion Lewis Hamilton for next season, which has reminded many observers of former "superteam" line-ups at the McLaren team that have ended in disaster. Both the Raikkonen/Montoya and Hamilton/Alonso pairings from the last few years failed to deliver a title and ended in acrimonious circumstances.
But Haug has said that he would be happy to see the two big names together, and insisted that the team would have no problem when it came to dealing with the two of them.
"Whatever you can do to get the best available drivers, that is what you have to do," Haug insisted, refusing to explain what Heikki Kovalainen was all about, "It's a question of money, it's a question of capability, a question of the amount of talent. Managing two megastars, I don't think that honestly it was a problem."
On the subject of the 2007 season, when Fernando Alonso left the team after a bitter year of fighting with Hamilton, Haug suggested that in fact the team relationship was better than the media had made out: "With Alonso there were some noises to the outside world, but in reality inside the team everybody did his job and in reality we should have won the world championship. But it was not due to not having team orders.
"You can imagine what would have happened in Fernando would not have blocked Lewis in Hungary, no penalty, one point more and you are there. This is how it goes sometimes. We won it by one point and we lost it by one point.
"I stress, I do not confirm that there is change. This is very important. But managing drivers ifs and whys is the name of the game and we are qualified to do so."
And although Raikkonen's earlier time with the team suffered from a poor relationship between the driver and former McLaren boss Ron Dennis, Haug insisted again that the situation was fine, and that but for reliability issues, Raikkonen could have won two titles during his time with the team.
"Reflecting on our co-operation which was five years, I think that it was positive," Haug claimed dubiously, "We should have won at least two world championships. I have to say we missed one with two points in 2003 but I think an engine failure was one of the reasons, so without that he could have done it.
"In 2005 he could have done it, in fairness. The engines at that stage were not as good and reliable as they are now. To have Kimi in our team winning two world championships would certainly have been a fair outcome for him. I have a good relationship with him and I'm sure he would say the same."
Alonso's Ferrari deal is expected to be announced towards the end of the week in Suzuka, with Raikkonen's McLaren deal and Robert Kubica's switch to Renault expected to be shored up shortly after.
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