From the interview with nick fry, and from what macca said in there statement,
It appears that money was not an issue.
So why has jenson left merc ?
Personaly, i think he is to be comended for taking up the mighty task of beating lewis on home ground.
Martin must have given assurences and made a BIG impression on jenson for him to leave brawn.
Though i do think brawn has been naive in there negotiations, i dont think for a second they thought jenson had the balls to leave for macca, hence them playing hardball.
They on there part clearly must have done something to upset him.
He is on the whole, a loyal driver, yes yes, the williams saga, but that was a long time ago.
Anyway, congrats jenson on getting the macca drive, you deserve it, and you earned it

After all the years he has stuck through them, through the lean times, now that he leaves when they are a top team something very sour must have occured.

He has been with them since 2003, maybe he wants a new challenge?

There is no garantee how good they will be though next year.Because next years car is all but finished in concept i guess.
It will take a while for the merc money to make a difference.
I think on terms of who will have the better car over the next few years, i would bet good money it will be mclaren !
Maybe it really was just the chalenge of taking on the percieved #1 in F1 ??

maybe he has balls, but he needs to grow spine. he seems to have conducted this like a weasel.

Yep Jenson has proved today he certainly has the minerals

Cant wait for March!!!

If anything it is Brawn who has been the weasel

I think he just shot himself in the leg...I quess that takes big balls

What the F are you talking about ?
This has been a run of the mill driver leaving for another team, for gods sake, he has been with them for over 5 years.
Time to move on, he was never going to better that result in that team, so time for a new chalenge.

Well said

Lol, poor Button, the guys managing McLaren are anything but trustworthy.

I'm having BAR/Williams flashbacks.

Maybe the choice was between a 1-year contract with Mercedes and a 3-year contract with McLaren?

Makes sense, then.

don't think so. according to Fry not the case.

Maybe, maybe not.
I apllaud him for taking the chalenge though.
Lets face it, on these forums it doesnt matter if he looses does it ?
He is no push over, and i dont doubt for a second that lewis will have to be on top top form to best jenson.
But what if jenson does come out on top ?

Quick get editing the grammar police have been out in force today

I'd say it comes down to stability within the team. Mercedes is the team's third owner in as many years; their fourth if you backdate it five years. McLaren have remained fairly static on the ownershp front for decades.

Very simple really. Mercedes didn´t want him. Period. They chose Rosberg and quick Nick for the team and probably paid for Jenson to move to Mac as part of the buy back deal.

Then why were they trying to negotitate with Button until the very end? If they wanted Rosberg and Heifeld, surely they'd just cut Button loose at the earliest opportunity.

No one here yourself and me included knows the real reasons. The only people that know are Jenson, his management and the Brawn bosses. They have all been very candid in the media and all parties appeared happy for Jenson to stay on the surface but something wasnt right. Either Jenson wanted a bigger commitment from the team to him (be it money or status) or more likely in my view Ross and Nick made him an offer and stuck by their guns knowing if Jenson took it it would be more beneficial to the team than Jensons WDC status. Jenson has taken the riskier yet more lucrative career move and should be praised for doing so. The relative pace of the Merc and the Mac come Melbourne will decide who was right and who was the weasel!

Has NH been confirmed as a Merc driver then?

Heidfeld hasn't been confirmed as ANYTHING. Heck, at the moment he has just as good a chance of driving for Mercedes as PEDRO DINIZ.

fair enough

I think Nick is/was just the 'safe option' (and he is) if they couldn't/can't get The Preferred Ones (Button, Vettel, Raikkonen.....)

There's no need to read an interview, is there?



"Q. And you were willing to offer a long-term deal like McLaren was?

N. Fry: We were. Jenson originally had a three-year agreement with us of which 2009 was the first year, so in essence we would have continued for the remaining two years broadly under the same umbrella, albeit with changed conditions."

If there was a 3 year agreement he would have already been under contract and unavailable to Mac.

Any thoughts then Clatter ?

I hadn't read it at that moment, indeed

It was published just before I posted (and maybe right at the time I was already thinking about posting something about it).

In my (weak, OK ) defence I have to say that it's pretty unusual for Autosport to post news items like these rather late in the evening off-season, so i didn't look at the front page at the time for a check.

Pure conjecture, but, Eddie Jordan has said that he has heard that Mercedes told Button that he'd be best off looking to sign elsewhere... Now if there is any truth in this, perhaps Merc went over the heads of Fry/Brawn to tell him that they (Merc) didn't really want him, but didn't fill Fry/Brawn in on the situation, so they tried to negotiate still.

My guess.

I think Brawn overplayed their hand and tried to get him cheaply on a short contract, which probably made him wonder if they really want him. The one thing he really wants is a competive car, Mac are probably best placed to provide that, and have shown they want him.

If you read Fry's q&a ol' bigg ball jens seemed to be rather distant to the team who gave him all the succes

Did Ross or Fry get in the car and win him them races and get him the points ?

Well they ****ed about the guy who won the team its one and only title

Button has been very long with the team so maybe he knows what the team really "incapable" of Maybe he also thinks that 2009 was a fluke...

Maybe winning isn't everything to Jenny. Some drivers demand to be number 1 in a team and will only drive for a team if the other driver is a hack (*cough*Michael*cough*), and they will do anything and everything to win. It looks like JB likes a challenge and wants to go head to head with the best in the biz (maybe the best ever). And Hamilton obviously also doesn't mind having some real competition in his team as I'm sure he could have been a pussy and demanded the team keep Heikki. No, both Jenny and Lewis have balls and are real racers. And I'm really glad, because if McL dominate next year like I think they're going to, we'll still have a lot of excitement watching those two fight it out, unlike the mind numbing '00 to '04 era. Let the games begin!

No title win is a fluke

He simply sounds bitter to me and unwilling to admit that they have screwed up. They could and should have sorted his contract months ago.

no. they havent.

So how did they give him success ?

He went out and got it himself, of course they played their part but he owes them sweet bugger all IMO

Hasn't Nick Fry always been considered to be a self serving story teller of the first degree? His reputation for bull goes back years. I consider him to be up there with the best liars in F1 along with Peter 'Fibs' Windsor and Bernie 'short man tall tales' Ecclestone

In the team's one and only season...

Anyway, Had Jenson not won it, Rubens would have.

How long has Button been with BAR, then Honda, and then Brawn? It is more or less the same team. At the end of the 2009 season, the performance is also not very encouraging so I think that Button has his doubts too with the team.

Obviously not when he finished 3rd in the championship

Try telling that to Colombo and Max1fan, and the other Kimi bashers.

I'm not a Kimi fan but he was awesome the last few races of 07

I particularly liked Fry calling him disloyal like he didn't see it coming from the 2x button gates they'd already been through with Jenson.

Just for fun I've just done a calculation whereby I've taken Button out of the equation and moved RB/SV up a place if they were placed lower in the standings. If I've not made a mistake it would gives final standings of SV 90, RB 89.5, so that does suggest that (assuming he never had a team mate beating him) Barrichello wouldn't have won (though it'd have been close!)

I think to challenge regularly for wins over the period of next three years McLaren and Ferrari are the best bets not RBR, Brawn/Mercedes or others...

Can't blame Button for going there even if he could be outclassed by Lewis. He still has a very good chance to get one or two wins in every season.

"Jenson has a big old set balls !"

So, what does that expression mean, he loaned his dad's?

big balls? no. poor judgment? yes.

it may feel good now to thumb his nose at mercedes gp but next season when hamilton is decimating him on the track and his reputation is ruined it won't feel so nice. my prediction is that jenson does not last at mclaren to see the end of this contract.