Martin Whitmarsh says Button, Hamilton raring to go in 2012 season – Formula 1 news
Martin Whitmarsh says that both Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton are pumped for the upcoming pre-season testing on February 7, 2012 at Jerez.
McLaren had good year in 2011 relative to other teams on the grid trying to play catch up to Red Bull. Although McLaren came in second on the constructors’ championship, the gap between the leader Red Bull and McLaren was enough to make them work even harder
for the 2012 season.
Whitmarsh told the official Formula 1 website that the duo will have equal opportunity to get the best results out of the latest version of the car.
“As you'd expect, with pre-season testing as restricted as it is nowadays, our race drivers will be doing as much as they can,” Whitmarsh said.
“Both Jenson and Lewis will consequently be spending a lot of time in Spain over the next few weeks, and both of them are raring to go. We're fortunate that we have two world champions in our driver line-up - a claim that can be made by no other team - and
McLaren's ethos has always been, and remains, to treat both its drivers as equal number-ones. That's what we've always done, that's what we'll do this year, and as long as I'm around that's what we'll always do,” he said.
Button had a particularly good season in 2011 placing second in the drivers’ championship. The Brit finished the season with three Grand Prix wins in the season. Hamilton on the other hand had a torrid season.
He was penalised for his on-track behaviour and had several run-ins with Ferrari driver Felipe Massa. Although Hamilton improved in the latter part of the season winning the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but he will be looking to improve on his last year showing.
Whitmarsh talking about the new car said that the he cannot say how fast the car is at this point and that he too will only find out once the cars go head to head in the first pre-season test.
He pointed to Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes AMG as direct competition to McLaren. He shed some light on the design of the new car and said that it is an evolution of the MP4-26 tweaked to adapt to the new technical regulations set forth by FIA for the 2012
season.
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