MERCEDES REVEAL F1'S WORST KEPT SECRET

Wednesday 23rd December 2009

It's not often that you turn to Kimi Raikkonen for sage insight into F1, but his reaction to the Mercedes driver recruitment plan was bang on. 'They just want German drivers' was Kimi's analysis before heading off to the WRC.

So, Michael Schumacher has finally signed for Mercedes - not exactly a turn-up for the books when you consider who the boss of the Mercedes team is. Ross Brawn has engineered all of Schumacher's World Championships, both at Benetton and at Ferrari.

Publicly Ferrari were happy to let their great champion follow his heart and away from a contract. In private it might be interesting to hear what they had to say. Because now their former ambassador will be doing his best to beat them up on track - Schumacher has never been one to give any quarter and you can't see that changing now.

In a way his defection/move to Brawn is kind of Luca Montezemolo's fault. When Ross Brawn came back from his Ferrari sabbatical, he was ready to take over Jean Todt's role and lead the team in 2008. The job went to Stefano Domenicali instead and Brawn was out in the cold. Thus Brawn moved to Honda which morphed into Brawn.

The genie came out of the bottle when Schumacher was offered Felipe Massa's drive and couldn't fulfil it thanks to the neck injury. Then all the jigsaw pieces started to fit into place.

Mercedes must have been negotiating to take over Brawn for some time, maybe even earlier than September. It was always suspicious why the white liveried cars weren't attracting more premium sponsorship, considering they were guaranteed a large chunk of screen time. Maybe they knew they didn't need the cash and couldn't offer sponsors multi-year deals when they knew Mercedes would be prescribing the livery for the following season.

It's easy to imagine this kind of conversation going on in September:

Nick: We ought to tie Jenson into a new deal, he's going to win the World Championship.
Ross: Hold on there Nick. I've been talking to Michael, and he's still keen on an F1 return.
Nick: Great idea big guy, you know Mercedes are fed up with McLaren never hiring German drivers.
Ross: Michael hasn't quite got the all-clear yet, but he's pretty sure the injury's sorted.
Nick: Okay, then we can use that as an undisclosed bargaining tool to offer Jenson not-very-much money.

During the last races of the season BBC commentator and F1's pundit-meister Martin Brundle said that it was extraordinary that Brawn hadn't tied up Button to a deal for 2010 and couldn't see what the delay was.

Button's side maintained that they weren't asking for that much money - considering he'd dropped a considerable amount from what Honda had agreed to pay him.

Then the Mercedes deal was announced and it all started to appear a bit fishy - Button's talks stalled, Mercedes insisted they wanted the best two drivers they didn't have to be German. They signed conveniently-German Nico Rosberg, but though Nick Heidfeld was talked about, they really needed a proven race winner in the team, not drivers who'd rarely been on the podium.

"This will be an international team. Mercedes-Benz is a global player," said Norbert Haug. "We definitely do not want to have a pure German team. It's an international team and we want to have the best drivers in the car."

Well, oopsie, look what you've done now.

Fast forward to December 23rd and they have got an all-German team. And more light can be shed on the driver selection process. Ross Brawn has already said contradictory things. Autosport have run a story where they say Brawn confirmed that he only decided to contact Schumacher about his availability after he knew that Button was leaving the team to join McLaren.

"We were in deep discussion with Jenson and I wanted to bottom those out before we entered into discussions with Michael," he said. "We didn't want to see Jenson leave but I could understand his reasons."

Which entirely contradicts the 'overlapping' quote that appeared today.

Ross has also said: "It overlapped to be honest. I had a loyalty to Jenson but when that started to look difficult I started talking to Michael, and things developed from there.

Michael and I kept very close over the years and I saw from his disappointment over the summer, when he couldn't drive a Ferrari, how much passion he still has for the sport."

Which means Ross knew from the summer that Michael was a likely driver for 2010. The fact that he's only prepared to talk about the contract negotiations in the vaguest of terms with sweeping generalizations about 'the end of the road' and 'overlap' and 'things developing' means that he has either got a very poor memory for the detail or doesn't want to come out and say that they had little intention of hiring Button for 2010.

Does it matter over much? No. Button's happy enough with McLaren and Schumacher's making a return to the only team apart from Ferrari that he could have driven for. We should be grateful that Ross Brawn learned a touch of the Machiavellian while he was at Maranello - it's F1 that wins.

Schumacher will attract enormous value and interest to a sport that needs it right now. And teams at the back of the grid that might have been struggling to get sponsorship will have the extra lure that their car will be competing against the most successful driver in F1 history. If only we could get Kimi back, too.

Andrew Davies