For the first time the howl and splutter of V8 engines echoed around the magnificent Yas Marina Circuit yesterday with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, Britain’s world champions in 2008 and 2009 respectively, leading the way for much of two sessions of practice for tomorrow’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The noise richocheting off the new grandstands and the futuristic roof of the Yas Hotel as dusk turned to early evening in the desert, drowned out all the talk about next season for a few minutes at least and with it the speculation about where Button will end up.

In reality the 29-year-old who, like his rivals, has given the world’s most expensive new race track the thumbs-up, has few choices with most of the competitive teams for 2010 having already settled their driver line-ups.

His options are to stay at Brawn GP, which remains the overwhelming favourite, or to move to McLaren Mercedes and the highly risky strategy of teaming up with Hamilton, should that team not succeed in re-signing Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari’s cast-off. McLaren sources are still talking up Button as a possibility, but it is hard to tell whether the team are serious about having two English drivers and successive world champions on their books or are doing it only to gain leverage in negotiations with Raikkonen.

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The spin is that this could be a “dream team”, that Button could earn a lot more than he would at Brawn and that he could give Hamilton a run for his money.

Sources at Vodafone, McLaren’s sponsor, started this idea, now the team are perpetuating it and Button himself has climbed on the bandwagon, most likely in an attempt to gain leverage in his own discussions with Brawn. Talking about his future on Thursday he was careful not to rule anything out, underlined that he would welcome a new challenge and said that the more competitive a team-mate he had in 2010, the better.

Many paddock watchers believe the option of moving to McLaren for Button would be a disastrous enterprise for a man whose career has been bedevilled by wrong choices on teams. They see him struggling to match Hamilton, who is arguably more entrenched in McLaren than any driver in any team in recent Formula One history, with the exception of Michael Schumacher at Ferrari. Those who know Hamilton well believe he would, as one put it, “mince” Button.

Sir Jackie Stewart some time ago suggested that, so long as Hamilton remains at McLaren, then all his team-mates are going to have a very hard time of it. His analysis has so far been proved spot-on. In 2007 Fernando Alonso thought that the team were institutionally biased in Hamilton’s favour and in the past two years Hamilton has blitzed Alonso’s successor, Heikki Kovalainen. Stewart sees no justification for Button’s switch to the Woking-based team and reminded us that he would never have considered a move of that kind to partner the Hamilton of his day. “Jackie Stewart wouldn’t have gone to the Lotus team when Jim Clark was there,” Stewart, the Scottish three-times world champion, said.

At Brawn, there is confidence that a deal with Button will be done. Ross Brawn, the team principal, repeated as much yesterday when he said the team work well with him, they like him and he knows their plans for the future. “I am sure we will find a solution,” he said. “I want to keep Jenson in the team and I believe he will be even stronger in the future with this championship behind him.”

Privately, Brawn managers indicate they believe a compromise will be reached over Button’s demands to return to his pre-credit crunch salary of £8 million, and that this will be achieved within the next two weeks.

Sources also made clear that rumours that the Brawn team is facing a funding crisis, pending being taken over by Mercedes Benz, are wide of the mark. As one source put it: “This team is extremely well-funded.”