It won’t have escaped you that Mercedes has effectively bought Brawn GP, will rename the team Mercedes Grand Prix, but also continue to partner McLaren until at least 2015.

So part of my question yesterday has been answered. But the driver question is very much unanswered.

Literally: Dieter Zetsch and Norbert Haug have refused to comment on drivers in any meaningful way (see the Q&A on autosport.com, for example).

It appears to be an open secret that Nico Rosberg will be with the team next year. The BBC’s Andrew Benson seems pretty convinced that it’ll be an all-German Mercedes line-up, Rosberg partnered by Nick Heidfeld, or possibly Timo Glock.

The all-German drivers question was more openly discussed by Mercedes management, Haug saying:

“We want to have the best ones and we definitely do not want to have the pure German team – it’s an international Silver Arrows team and we want to have the best drivers in the car.”

As a German company, I don’t think they can get away with not having at least one German driver. But they have an international market to deal with, and to that end, I don’t think they’d be wise to have two German drivers.

The German government has been quite protectionist in its dealings during the current economic storm, most obviously over GM. It put a lot of money behind the proposed sale of GM Europe, on the condition that the German factories all remain open. It then went a bit mental when GM decided not to sell Opel et al.

I don’t think Mercedes would want to be associated with that kind of sentiment, subconsciously or otherwise.

But mutterings suggest that Jenson Button is going to end up at McLaren now, and German drivers do look like the best alternative. So I really have no sort of helpful conclusion to offer. Just musings.