Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton play out McLaren’s perfect scene

By Tom Cary, F1 Correspondent Published: 7:20PM GMT 29 Jan 2010 Except that, for Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, the lines were delivered using microphones while the entire workforce of Vodafone UK stood beneath them snapping away at the blossoming courtship on mobile camera-phones. The highly anticipated launch of McLaren’s 2010 challenger, the MP4-25, at Vodafone’s UK headquarters in Newbury was the perfect opportunity for a choreographed love-in. Two hundred or so of the world’s press, row upon row of television cameras, a shiny new car with the number one painted on the sides, a controlled environment. The first chance to bury reports that this team might not be big enough for two world champions. As you would expect from such seasoned pros, the drivers did not miss a trick. Button described Hamilton as “an exceptional driver who I can learn from” while the younger driver, for his part, described Button as “the best there is” and spoke of the “chemistry” already developing between them. Not that there was anything insincere about what was said. On the contrary, no one had realised quite how toasty the relationship was until Hamilton let slip that he had actually rung his team principal, Martin Whitmarsh, towards to back end of last season, to suggest Button as his new team-mate. This flew in the face of the official version of events that Button had not even considered leaving Brawn GP until contract negotiations broke down at the 11th hour and he was invited to “pop in” to McLaren’s headquarters in Woking for a look around en route home from Japan. “One thing you may not know is that I actually called Martin and said, ‘What about Jenson’,” Hamilton said. “It was before they had any negotiations. He’s the best driver there is and the team wanted to get the best driver possible. “I can’t win the constructors’ championship on my own, so I need to have as strong a team-mate as possible. You want someone to push you. I had that in 2007 [with Fernando Alonso], and in 2008 Heikki [Kovalainen] pushed me at points. I’ve no doubt that Jenson will be hard to beat. His results last year speak for themselves.” Asked if he knew about this glowing recommendation from Hamilton, Button shook his head. But then the world champion, too, surprised…

Source: Daily Telegraph

Posted by admin 29 January 2010

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