Frome flyer Jenson Button has been nominated for the Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year award following his Formula 1 World Championship success last year.

The 30-year-old was an unlikely winner of last year's title after nearly not having a team to race for.

However, Brawn GP came to his rescue and helped him to the title, which has seen the team also nominated in the Laureus Sports Awards, in the World Team Award category.

Following the withdrawal of Honda from Formula One at the end of 2008, Button was left without a drive until former Honda technical director Ross Brawn stepped in and engineered a management buyout of the team.

Button then found himself in a highly competitive Mercedes-powered car and won six of the first seven races of the season, equalling the record of Michael Schumacher and Jim Clark.

He clinched the World Championship at the Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo with a race to spare and has since moved to join Lewis Hamilton at McLaren for the 2010 season.

With 169 starts, Button had made the second-highest number of race starts before making his breakthrough and becoming world champion. Only Nigel Mansell, with 176 starts, took part in more grand prix before winning the title.

The other nominees in Button's category are fellow Brits cyclist Mark Cavendish and diver Tom Daley, Argentinian tennis star Juan martin del Potro, South Korean golfer Ji Yai Shin and German football club VFL Wolfsburg.

The award winners will be decided by the Laureus World Sports Academy, a jury made up of 46 of the greatest sportsmen and sportswomen of all time, and will be unveiled during a televised awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi on March 10.

Meanwhile, Button is continuing his pre-season testing with his new McLaren team ahead of the start of the 2010 Formula 1 season with the Bahrain Grand Prix on March 14.