Report: Button, Brawn closing in on deal

Well, those Jenson Button to McLaren rumors were fun while they lasted.

The Times is reporting today that Button and Brawn management are close to a deal that would essentially return the new world champion to his old salary, an increase the paper calls a “recession-busting” one.

Once this deal is all locked up, it leaves just one former world champion unsigned: Kimi Raikkonen. [Meaning a former world champ that we think anyone really wants.]

The meat of the Times’ piece is this:

Ross Brawn, the team owner, may not be able to fund a full restoration of the £8 million-a-year in Button’s original deal, but there are clear signs that he is prepared to move much closer to his driver’s demands.

“Jenson is obviously a great driver, so he has got to be a target,” Brawn said yesterday. “We want Jenson to stay in the team and I think we will find a solution. Jenson has a contract with us but that contract is not the salary of a world champion, not the salary of a team that is in a much stronger position than it was ten months ago. We are working with Jenson to find a balance between what we can afford and what he feels is fair for his status.”

With the residue of £100 million of funding left as a legacy when Honda walked out of Formula One still available and new sponsors climbing on board, Brawn GP’s future is said to be secure for at least three years. But Brawn are only one of the teams dealing with the new financial realities of sponsors’ budgets being reduced throughout sport and workforces being slimmed down in their factories.

As Todd and Grace noted in this week’s podcast, we keep hearing about Brawn’s secure financial future, but we haven’t seen what that is. Who are the new sponsors, especially the big “title” one that Nick Fry crowed about months ago?

What is Brawn gaining by keeping the sponsor names a secret?

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