Button’s future with McLaren looks tense

Grand Prix oldie Jenson Button’s Formula One future is in the balance. And his flop McLaren team have steadfastly refused to reveal if they will be taking up an extension option on the 35-year-old’s £8 million (Dh45.24 million-a-year contract and raise his wages to £12 million.

The 2009 world champion, a 15-time winner, has struggled even to finish races this season after the once all-conquering team’s diabolical tie-up with Japanese engine giants Honda. He has been dumped helplessly deep down among the also-rans despite his admirably patient efforts to salvage some half decent response from his hopeless invalid carriage of a car.

He could be forgiven for wanting to escape the trap he has fallen into through no fault, or lack of effort, of his own. The honest performer that he is, that is not his way and he has maintained his loyalty, a rare attribute among Formula One drivers, to UK-based McLaren’s continuously futile cause.

Ahead of this week’s Singapore Grand Prix where he has twice been second-placed the downed Frome Flyer pleads: I would like a decision on my future, one way or another, in the next few weeks. And he adds more in fervent hope than sure-fire knowledge: I’ll know something pretty soon.

The cash-strapped outfit, having lost valuable big money sponsors, could be tempted to offload Button and recruit a much lower paid driver in a penny pinching move. Meantime, widespread and continual paddock rumours that he could rejoin Williams, the team that gave him his F1 breakthrough 15 years ago, have been wrecked by legendary team owner Sir Frank Williams.

He has just extended deals with his current pairing of Brazilian veteran Felipe Massa and fast rising star Valtteri Bottas, from Finland. The Button dilemma is heightened by the reluctance of French team manager Eric Boullier, no doubt under instructions from tough guy McLaren principal Ron Dennis, to ease his driver’s anxieties by confirming his place in the 2016 line-up.

Dennis, shortsightedly ahead of the team’s appalling performances, just about their worst ever, cannot possibly have been sure that his pre-season forecast of caution, citing the team’s new tie-up project with Honda, would ring so wickedly true.

“You could argue,” he speculated: “We are setting ourselves up for an almighty fall.”

How right he was... The indomitable figure rarely, if ever, regrets any of the outpourings that frequently get up peoples’ noses but I would wager he rues this one — and will for a long time to come.

— The writer is a motorsports expert.