McLaren to announce decision on Jenson Button and drivers on Thursday
The Formula One team McLaren will announce their 2015 driver lineup on Thursday after calling a media conference at their technology centre in Woking.
It has been known for a while Fernando Alonso is to return to the team he left in inauspicious circumstances back in 2007.
The group chief executive Ron Dennis, however, has taken a surprising amount of time over deciding whether Jenson Button or Kevin Magnussen will partner the Spaniard.
Button, who began his career at Williams in 2000 has been racing in F1 for 15 years but should he not be kept on by the team will not be on the grid in 2015 as the driver lineups elsewhere have been finalised.
He may yet make a move into the FIA World Endurance Championship as Mark Webber did last year when he left Red Bull to join Porsche.
Magnussen has just completed his first year in F1 and was comprehensively out-scored by Button, but the Danish driver is understood to come considerably cheaper than Button, with the latter on approximately £12m in 2014 to Magnussen’s £500,000.
Finance may have been crucial in the decision, with McLaren reputed to have paid up £25.5m a year for Alonso on a two-year contract, with an option to leave should the team’s new partnership with Honda in 2015 not meet his expectations.