Formula One drivers Fernando Alonso (left) and Jenson Button during the presentation of McLaren-Honda’s driver line-up for the 2015 season in Woking, Britain, yesterday. (EPA)
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Fernando Alonso will partner Jenson Button at McLaren next season, the team announced yesterday. |
As expected, the British Formula One team confirmed the signing of two-time world champion Alonso and ended weeks of speculation by offering Button a new contract.
Button, 34, the 2009 world champion, has been favoured ahead of 22-year-old Dane Kevin Magnussen who made his debut last season. The Englishman will be going into his 16th F1 season.
Magnussen, 22, will remain “an important part of the team, as test and reserve driver,” McLaren said.
Alonso, 33, drove for McLaren in 2007 after winning two world titles for Renault, but had a difficult season there and returned to Renault before joining Ferrari in 2010.
McLaren are hoping a new partnership with engine provider Honda will revive the team’s fortunes after a disappointing season in which the team finished fifth in the constructors’ championship, with Button eighth and Magnussen 11th in the drivers’ standings.
The McLaren-Honda partnership won eight drivers’ and constructors’ world championships and 44 Grands Prix in the Ayrton Senna-Alain Prost era between 1988 and 1991.
“I am joining this project with enormous enthusiasm and determination, knowing that it may require some time to achieve the results we are aiming for, which is no problem for me,” Alonso said.
“Over the past year I have received several offers, some of them really tempting, given the current performance of some of the teams that showed interest.
“But, more than a year ago, McLaren-Honda contacted me and asked me to take part, in a very active way, in the return of their partnership - a partnership that dominated the Formula 1 scene for so long.”
Alonso added that he had “in-depth discussions with all the senior people at both McLaren and Honda” and “it is clear to me that, together, McLaren and Honda are in the process of beginning what is sure to be a long and successful partnership.”
Honda is said to have wanted Button after establishing a good relationship with the Englishman when he drove for them from 2003 to 2008.
“Like Fernando, I am certain that McLaren and Honda will achieve great things together, and I feel sure that, working together, all of us will pull incredibly hard to create a brilliantly effective winning team,” Button said.
McLaren chairman and chief executive Ron Dennis, who had initially reported to be in favour of retaining the youthful potential of Magnussen, said McLaren’s policy “has always been to assemble the strongest line-up possible, and in Fernando and Jenson I firmly believe that is exactly what we have”.
Dennis added: “We signed Fernando a little while ago, but we decided not to announce the fact until we had also re-signed Jenson as his teammate.
“For many reasons our negotiations with Jenson took quite a long time, but, now that they have been concluded, we are confident that our collaboration with him will continue to thrive in the future every bit as well as it has in the past. Make no mistake about it, Jenson is 100 per cent committed to McLaren-Honda, to Formula 1, and to winning.”
Jenson and Button have 500 Grands Prix between them, winning 47 of them, Dennis pointed out.
“I can safely say, therefore, that we now have by an order of magnitude the best driver line-up of any current Formula 1 team,” he said.
Magnussen meanwhile will “continue to be an integral part of our team” and “remains an excellent prospect for the future”.
McLaren’s announcement completes the Formula One driver line-ups for 2015, with, among the key moves, four-time world champions Sebastian Vettel moving from Red Bull to take Alonso’s place at Ferrari.
