Mercedes to leave driver decision to boss Brawn

"Ross Brawn is the boss of the team and it would not be smart for us to dictate to him anything like a driver decision," Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Mercedes' parent Daimler, told reporters Monday.

"We will talk and listen to what he wants to do and typically agree."

Brawn won both titles this year with Britain's Jenson Button taking the drivers crown while Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello won two races.

Barrichello has since joined Williams while Button has yet to agree a new deal and has been talking to Mercedes-powered McLaren, who already have Britain's 2008 world champion Lewis Hamilton.

Nico Rosberg looks sure to join Brawn as one of their drivers, with speculation that the team could have an all-German line-up with Nick Heidfeld available as his team mate now that BMW have left the sport.

"Clearly Mercedes have been planning for some time to buy in to Brawn and of course they are looking for two German drivers," former team owner turned pundit Eddie Jordan told BBC radio after Monday's announcement.

"So if that's a German team, that opens the door for Jenson to go somewhere like McLaren and creating this wonder team of British stars."

Mercedes motorsport vice-president Norbert Haug said in a conference call that such talk was wide of the mark.

"This will be an international team like Mercedes is a global player," he said.

"If you look back in our history we very often have been criticized for not having a German driver so we were always open and we took the driver decision always together with McLaren. And this will be the same in the future.

"We want to have the best ones and we definitely do not want to have the pure German team or whatever. It is an international Silver Arrows team."

Zetsche added that Mercedes "certainly would not be opposed if one of them would be German but that is not a pre-requisite that we would give the team."

Haug accepted that there would be speculation but hoped there could be an announcement on drivers soon.

"I would rather hope next week but don't kill me if it is a couple of weeks longer," he said. "But I would like to say definitely this year."

(Editing by Kevin Fylan)