McLaren must push Jenson Button to succeed after Vodafone exit

JENSON Button faces a pounds 50 million pounds ($73m) race to keep his McLaren team in Formula One's big league.

Pressure mounts on Button

JENSON Button faces a pounds 50 million pounds ($73m) race to keep his McLaren team in Formula One's big league.

Pressure is mounting on Britain's most successful motor racing outfit after Vodafone announced that they were pulling the plug on their lucrative title sponsorship deal. The telecommunications giant will walk away at the end of the year, leaving a huge hole in McLaren's finances.

The search has started for a sponsor to fill the pounds 50 million-a-year void, but it is crucial that McLaren stay in the race for the World Championship because the team's potential value will slide if Button and Sergio Perez, his inexperienced new team-mate from Mexico, fail to deliver results on the track, starting this weekend at the Australian Grand Prix.

Button was cautious yesterday as he weighed up McLaren's decision to produce a radically different car for 2013, unlike most of their rivals who will be putting out evolutionary versions of last year's machines. So far, Button has no idea whether the decision will prove brave - or costly now that McLaren are looking to impress future investors.

"It is going to be mixed conditions this weekend, so it will be tough to see where we are," Button, who has won three of the past four Australian Grands Prix, said.

"The important thing is to make the best of what we have at this moment in time. Most cars are fundamentally the same as last year. They have developed (their cars), whereas with us it is very different. It is always going to be tougher if you have made bigger changes." It was hardly a ringing endorsement for a squad that knows the heat is on.

The traditional line-up of teams dominating Formula One could be shaken and stirred this season: Red Bull have come on to the scene as the most successful squad of the moment ahead of Ferrari, but McLaren will sense that an ambitious Lotus team, along with Mercedes, are anxious to push them farther down the pecking order.

Qualifying is the first hurdle for Button and Perez, neither of whom have reputations as one-lap specialists, which means they may have to fight their battles from farther back down the grid. Button admits that he is not as fast over a qualifying lap as Lewis Hamilton, his former team-mate, who has decamped for Mercedes, leaving behind a series of barbed comments about his old team.

That also forced Button on to the defensive on behalf of a McLaren team feeling increasingly beleaguered after six months during which they have lost a star driver, had Paddy Lowe, their technical director, poached by Mercedes and now their main sponsor is heading for the exit. Unlike Mercedes, which is financed largely by the giant German car manufacturer, McLaren rely on sponsors, which means that their drivers have to work hard to satisfy their paymasters, something that upset Hamilton.

"In this team you work - you have to work and, perhaps, harder than in other teams," Button said. "Initially, when I came to the team it was a shock. You learn to understand, to adapt. That is the job."

McLaren have been one of the most successful teams at attracting long-term sponsors; there have only been four title names in the team's 50-year history, ranging from Yardley to Marlboro, then West and, finally, Vodafone. They now promise an "exciting announcement" on December 2 but Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren's team principal, has clearly been facing up to the consequences of losing Vodafone for some time.

Sponsors willing to pay the sort of figures that Vodafone could afford are few and far between, though, and well aware that only success buys crucial television time and global exposure.

Coca-Cola are known to be sniffing around F1 and speculation is growing that Carlos Slim, the Mexican businessman and world's richest man, could direct one of his telecommunications businesses to take over from Vodafone.

That connection was easily made after McLaren hired Perez, who is backed by Slim's son. However, the team insist that the decision to hire the 23-year-old had nothing to do with Vodafone's exit. Jonathan Neale, McLaren's managing director, said that Perez will replace Hamilton because of a series of scintillating performances for Sauber last season.

The Times