No early McLaren activities for Jenson Button

Brawn GP chief executive Nick Fry has revealed that the team will block Jenson Button from taking part in any activities with his new McLaren team before the end of the year.

Button confirmed earlier this week that he was to leave the team that carried him to the 2009 drivers’ title to partner Lewis Hamilton at McLaren next season, with the announcement coming just after news that Brawn is to be taken over by Mercedes next season.

With his former employers revealing they were disappointed by the way in which the deal had gone through and that the driver had ‘breached his contract’ by visiting McLaren’s Woking headquarters prior to the agreement being signed, Fry has now stated that Brawn would ‘rigorously enforce’ its constraints on the Briton and that he wouldn’t be doing anything with McLaren before the turn of the year.

“Jenson will not be doing anything at all for McLaren until the end of this calendar year,” he told the Guardian. “If he does, we will be looking on it very dimly. He didn’t have any obligations to us in 2010, but there are issues with regard to the [McLaren contract] signing process on which we are in discussion with him at the moment.

“There are other constraints on what Jenson can do between now and the end of the year which we will be rigorously enforcing.”