Hacker: Time to hit the panic button?

Formula One isn’t used to bombshells. Before something big happens, the jungle drums tend to start to beat, information gets passed out from reliable sources and the things the press predict usually come true in due course. Over the last few weeks, however, trying to figure out which stories have a grain of truth in them has become as hard as spotting genuine smoke signals on Bonfire Night. Little wonder, then, that few seriously believed current F1 world champion Jenson Button and former champ Lewis Hamilton would team up at McLaren to form an all-British superteam. But they did.

Quite simply, nobody knows how things will work out between the two McLaren drivers next year. There are all sorts of theories flying round about who will be quicker, but until Button and Hamilton get into the cars and start racing in anger we won’t be able to tell. The reason for this is that their career trajectories are so phenomenally different as to be virtually incomparable.

Button, on one hand, is the journeyman professional who raced a range of cars of differing quality before landing on his feet at Brawn GP. He has proved himself to be the equal to a number of very competent teammates, most notably finding his feet quicker at Brawn than ex-Ferrari driver Rubens Barrichello. Hamilton, by contrast, is McLaren through and through. He has never raced for another team, and has arguably always enjoyed Number One status for the silver and red outfit. The McLaren-Mercedes team is pretty much built around him, and it would take a very brave driver to try to out-do Hamilton on the track.

It is because of this difference that nobody can really get the measure of either Button or Hamilton’s relative pace. The only interesting thing I’ve noticed is that Brawn weren’t exactly moving heaven and earth to keep Jenson on their books. Even with the influx of German money, the team soon to be re-branded Mercedes declined to meet Button’s wage demands. Generally, a championship-winning driver is considered a prime asset to a team for marketing reasons if nothing else, but Ross Brawn seemed quite content to relinquish the coveted number one on the nosecone in return for a free space in his driver line-up. Perhaps there’s something about Button that those seriously in the know do not rate – but again we’ll have to wait until the flag drops to see how true this is.

Regardless of what happens before the first race next season, one thing is clear – the F1 landscape is changing at an alarming rate, and nobody really seems to know what will happen next. The latest wild story doing the rounds is that Michael Schumacher could be set for a comeback with Mercedes, with Jacques Villeneuve also rumoured to be close to returning (for what it’s worth, here’s my tip – Kimi Raikkonen will pop up on the 2010 grid within five races).

What goes on out on track, then is only half the story. If one replaced the names of cars with the names of people, F1’s current events would read something like the plot of a Mills and Boon novel. And it is precisely this blend of wheel-to-wheel racing and high-level human drama that makes Formula One so alluring to so many.