Jenson Button is to get the early Christmas present he craves of a recession-busting pay increase and the chance of a seat in one of the best cars in the Formula One house. It became clear yesterday that Button has no desire to desert Brawn GP, the team that has helped to bring him his first Formula One world title.

It also became clear that Brawn have no desire to lose their champion and will move towards his demand for a £5 million pay rise with the team aiming to have his protracted contract negotiations sorted out before the end of the next month.

That will be a relief all round, with Button increasingly distracted by the talk of his contract problems since he secured the World Championship at a thrilling Brazilian Grand Prix a little over a week ago.

Speculation has linked Button with a move to McLaren, alongside Lewis Hamilton, his predecessor as world champion, and at least one other senior Formula One team is known to have run the rule over his performances on his way to the title this season.

Button, though, has insisted he wants to stay at Brawn but merely wants to see a reward for his championship performance. The driver from Frome, in Somerset, took a £5 million pay cut at the start of the season to ensure Brawn, which rose from the ashes of the Honda team, was able to finance its place on the grid. Ross Brawn, the team owner, may not be able to fund a full restoration of the £8 million-a-year in Button’s original deal, but there are clear signs that he is prepared to move much closer to his driver’s demands.

“Jenson is obviously a great driver, so he has got to be a target,” Brawn said yesterday. “We want Jenson to stay in the team and I think we will find a solution. Jenson has a contract with us but that contract is not the salary of a world champion, not the salary of a team that is in a much stronger position than it was ten months ago. We are working with Jenson to find a balance between what we can afford and what he feels is fair for his status.”

With the residue of £100 million of funding left as a legacy when Honda walked out of Formula One still available and new sponsors climbing on board, Brawn GP’s future is said to be secure for at least three years. But Brawn are only one of the teams dealing with the new financial realities of sponsors’ budgets being reduced throughout sport and workforces being slimmed down in their factories.

Button remains hugely popular with Brawn executives and the workforce, whom he went to see at the factory in Brackley, Northamptonshire, last week. The bond, forged through some bad times and now one of the most remarkable revivals in the history of British sport, is strong and more than likely to survive this dispute.

The pity for the Brawn workforce, though, is that they might not get to see their champion in action live at a British Grand Prix. Since the collapse of the deal to move the race from Silverstone to Donington, Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s commercial rights-holder, has cooled on saving the race.

That would be an astonishing decision, given the strength of feeling among the dozen Formula One teams listed to be on the grid next season.

Eight of those, including Brawn and McLaren, are based in Britain and will want a home showcase, while many of the leading sponsors in the sport, such as Vodafone, also have their headquarters or a large presence in the UK, and will want a shop window for their brands.

Donington, meanwhile, faces crippling financial problems caused by its pursuit of the British Grand Prix. It is thought that the circuit is deep in debt and owes Ecclestone’s management company, which runs the sport, up to £18 million in cancellation fees.