All change at McLaren in a bid for equality Monday 11th January 2010 - PlanetF1.com Jenson Button is to benefit from a behind-the-scenes reshuffle at McLaren as the team strive to guarantee equality between their two drivers. Since Lewis Hamilton burst onto the scene in 2007, McLaren have consistently faced questions about favouritism within the team, and insistently replied their drivers are given equal treatment. It has emerged Button, on a visit to the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, even asked, 'Is this Lewis' team'? It would appear Button is eager for parity ahead of the defence of the Formula One World title he won last year, and in facing a team-mate who has been with McLaren since the age of 13. With Button now on board, and believing it to be the right time to make changes, Hamilton's race engineer for the last three years, Phil Prew, becomes McLaren's principal race engineer. Hamilton will now have at his side Andy Latham, who has been with McLaren Racing since 2000, while Button will be overseen by Jakob Andreason, who was Prew's assistant with Hamilton. "When Jenson visited MTC, one of the questions he asked was, 'Is this Lewis' team?'," said McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale. "The answer was, 'Yes, of course it's Lewis' team, as it was Heikki Kovalainen's team, Fernando Alonso's, Juan Pablo Montoya's and Kimi Raikkonen's, and it will be your team as well.' "Is this Lewis' team to the exclusion of any other high-performance driver? Absolutely not. "At McLaren, we love winning drivers and we want to go about telling the world that story." As to the reasoning behind the reshuffle, Neale replied: "Firstly, we felt it was the right time. "Both our current race engineers, Phil Prew and Mark Slade (Heikki Kovalainen), have been the team's race engineers for more than 15 years. "We've now a number of very good people who are trained and ready to go and we want to give them the platform from which they can make their experience and expertise really count. "We also want to build an engineering team around Jenson in exactly the same way we did with Lewis back in 2007. "We want to create a strong group of individuals who can bring out the best in Jenson's naturally smooth style. "Now we have Jenson confirmed to drive alongside Lewis, we want to make absolutely sure we can do an equal job for both drivers. "We're giving both drivers a fresh engineering team, with Phil as the bridge between them both. "It ensures greater parity between the drivers but it's primarily to ensure there's total transfer in the learning of set-up development. "It gives us a figurehead and a go-to person for the rest of the organisation across the race weekend, so they can ask Phil: 'What's happening with set-up? Which way are we going?"'
you'd think that would've been the first question he asked when he was considering joining the team. me thinks jenson is feeling some trepidation against going head to head with hamilton!
How on earth do you draw the conclusion that it was not equal before from the article? They say that the 2 previous race engineers are being moved in favor of 2 new guys. This displays favoritism (now or previously) to Hamilton how?
I was going to ask exactly the same thing...... If anything, you could (if you really tried ) read the reverse into it - Hammi's engineer got "promoted", and he gets a "newbie" as chief on his car....... Certainly no evidence of any favoritism. Cheers, Ian
David Coulthard has stated that there were a number of occasions when the McLaren team informed him that he had to give way to his team mate Hakkinen. One of these occasions was the Australian Grand Prix in 1998, the first race of the season. Just because McLaren say they don't ever use team orders doesn't automatically make it so!.
Favouring one driver at the expense of another doesn't necessarily means team orders. In any case, these are supposed to be banned during a race in GPs. It can be far subtle than that, by giving more information, or the lastest equipment, or more attention to one and delaying the same treatment to the other. Or what about giving the best engineer and the most experienced mechanics to your favourite? Or what about giving more testing time, more access to larger tyre choice, or more input during design, etc ... Even an ECU can be tailored to a particular type of driving, so do most of the electronics controling traction, gearchanges, etc ...!!
Last teams that blatantly had favoritism were Ferrari with Schumacher and Alonso with Renault. From day one of the season. IMO most teams will let them run until one driver has a stronger hold of the points battle typically half way through the season. At which time, yes, there will be orders and favoritism. They all do it and should do it. They are not playing for marbles.
Hi Mike, I didnt mean to insinuate that at all. Just seemed odd how it was addressed as an item of past criticism. One would hope RD all these year didnt show any. Others felt differently. Seems to be a positive development no matter and I think JB will be fine. Cheers!! David - DF1
