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Sir Stirling Moss has backed Jenson Button to outperform his McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton again this season.
Button finished runner-up in the drivers’ championship last year while Hamilton finished in fifth place after a difficult year on and off the track.
It was the first time Hamilton had failed to beat a teammate since beginning his Formula 1 career and Moss believes the 2008 world champion will struggle to overcome the experienced Button in 2012.
“Lewis does funny things, so one can't be sure. I would put my money on Jenson. Yes I would,” the 82-year-old told Reuters.
“Lewis is terrific, he really is exceptionally quick, but Jenson thinks about certain things better than Lewis will,” he went on to explain. “Like when it's raining and whether or not to go in for a change of tyres. For all those sorts of things he has a better understanding of it, and experience is a lot of it."
Moss however does not believe either driver will be a match for Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull.
“They (the McLaren drivers) are up there, but not as far as he (Vettel) is. Their problem is that they're against a better outfit. The Red Bull is so good, it's enormously difficult to be as good as that is and I don't think they are yet,” he pointed out.
However, some believed that towards the end of last season McLaren had the fastest car on the grid and could carry the momentum this year, something Red Bull team principal Christian Horner strongly disagreed with.
“Well, I don’t remember them having the fastest car in 2011. 18 pole positions and 12 wins speak for themselves and these results leave very little space for another ‘fastest car’,” Horner told the official F1 website.
With the ban for off-throttle blown diffusers now in effect the advantage Red Bull held in high-speed corners could be eradicated but Horner admits the team can only try and adjust to the changes.
“We’ve always been good at adapting to those challenges and we must not lose that ability. Of course, in such an environment you can never be complacent, as reality will bite immediately if you are,” he explained.