Button vs. Hamilton, the not so cosy life at McLaren
The last couple of seasons have been cosy at McLaren for Lewis Hamilton, once Alonso left the team at the end of the 2007 season he’s been partnered with Heikki Kovalainen who he’s comfortably beaten. Jenson Button on the other hand has been in a team with Rubens Barrichello who is no push over. Now they are teamed up together.
Jenson Button is moving to the team so that instantly puts him as some disadvantage but he’s moved teams before and he is the current world champion so there can be no institutional favouritism, openly anyway. He’s also gone into the team knowing past form and his personal team will be trying to ensure that everything happens as he wants it to. I did hear somewhere that he’d forced some sort of management restructure at the team to ensure there would be no favouritism. If so that says two things – one that he has the influence to force that type of change which is good and two that he feels he needs to which is bad.
Hamilton on the other hand has had his McLaren world turned upside down, with Button arriving he has none of the arguments that won him so much favour early on, Button is British and a world champion too remember. People at McLaren will also remember the whole ‘lying’ scandal that must have damaged Hamiltons status in the team.
Ultimately the battle will play itself out on the track, Button and Hamilton will feel that the have to beat each other and they won’t be friends, despite what anyone says. The wrangling behind the scenes will affect the on track performance though and it will be interesting to see what happens out there. First blood has gone to Hamilton in the testing but we don’t know for sure whether Button ever had the opportunity to get that same time given the track conditions but it’s not the start he’d have hoped for.
Testing will be old news though by the time we reach Bahrain and beyond and so this is where it really matters, come race day who crosses the finishing line first and we seen from both of them that they are racers, and from the tests that the car is fast. Throw the other teams into the mix and you’ve a recipe for a very exciting driver contest here, I think that it will be closer than a lot of people are saying.
Popularity: 25%
