Jenson Button is so eager for parity with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren that he bluntly asked bosses: "Is this Lewis' team?"
According to The Sun, Button posed the question during a visit to the squad's base in Woking.
The response he received was: "No — it is Lewis' team and your team."
To back it up, McLaren have shuffled engineering staff to make sure Hamilton and Button are given equal status.
Since Hamilton burst on to the F1 scene in 2007, the team have consistently faced questions about favouritism — and have just as consistently replied that all their drivers are treated the same.
But Button's question reveals his concern at having a team mate who has been part of the McLaren family since he was 12.
The staffing shake-up sees Phil Prew, Hamilton's engineer for the last three years, being promoted to McLaren's principal race engineer.
Hamilton will now have at his side Andy Latham, who has been with McLaren since 2000, while Jakob Andreason, who was Prew’s assistant with Hamilton, will oversee Button.
Referring to the reasoning behind the reshuffle, McLaren MD Jonathan Neale replied: "We want to build an engineering team around Jenson in exactly the same way we did with Lewis back in 2007.
