In an interesting turn of events 2009 World Champion Jenson Button has turned his back on his championship winning team Brawn/Mercedes GP and signed with McLaren for a 3 year deal with the Woking based team. Button will be earning £6m a year.

His decision to join McLaren has been considered by some to be career suicide as he will be partnering 2008 World Champion Lewis Hamilton arguably the best driver in F1 at the moment. This will create an All-British line up for McLaren and the first tim in the history of F1 where a team will field the two most recent world champions.

As to the reason why Button would choose to leave the Brackley based team which he has been involved with for the last 7 years is still not certain. He is leaving a team which would have been built around him and entering a team which has been built around the McLaren star Lewis Hamilton. The Mercedes buyout of Brawn seems to have pushed Button out the door.

Recent reports have suggested that Mercedes GP had offered Button £8m salary for next season with £4m for points bonuses. This is clearly more money then he will earn driving for McLaren but it seems that Button had breached his contract when he decided to visit the McLaren headquarters earlier this week. This may have been the reason why the Brawn management had become disenchanted by their World Champion and led to the negotiations breaking down.