Mercedes: No plans to walk away from McLaren

Mercedes Benz has confirmed it is not planning to end its relationship with McLaren, even though it has agreed to buy into the Brawn GP team.

The German car manufacturer has agreed to buy into the Brackey-based squad over a three year period.

But bosses at Daimler, Mercedes’ parent company, insist they have no intention of ending their long-term partnership with McLaren - the contract for which expires in 2011.

Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche told autocar.co.uk said that the future of their relationship with McLaren would depend on the future costs of formula one.

'Ending the relationship is not an option but we may have a different relationship,' said Zetsche.

'We at Mercedes want to see significantly lower budgets in F1 and the changing of regulations.'

Zetsche also revealed that Mercedes’ deal with Brawn was partly driven by McLaren’s decision to design and launch their own supercar, the MP4-12C.

'For a long period we had a lack of alignment on road cars, but we have now found a clear solution and we won't participate,' said Zetsche.