Formula One world champion Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton appeared together as teammates for the first time Friday to show off the new McLaren that they will use to fight each other this season. Button, who won the 2009 championship with Brawn GP, now reborn as Mercedes, looked happy and relaxed as he stood alongside the sport's youngest champion, the 2008 winner who turned 25 this month. “We need to start forgetting about last year ... and looking to the future. And this is the future,” said 30-year-old Button, lifting the covers off the sleek silver and red MP4-25 car with his number one on it. Asked to comment on his new teammate, Hamilton grinned as Button whispered something. “He says be nice,” he said, giving the older Briton a friendly hug. “I won my first ever championship on John (Button)'s engines,” he said, referring to his teammate's father. “I always wanted to follow in Jenson's footsteps. “I'm really looking forward to working with him for the rest of the year and years to come.” Speaking at the headquarters of title sponsor Vodafone, McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh quoted Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, in saying “preparation is the key to success.” “We have prepared for this season more comprehensively than ever before,” he declared. McLaren is the first team to have the two most recent title-holders together in their lineup and the first with two champions since they had Alain Prost and the late Ayrton Senna paired together in a notoriously acrimonious 1989 partnership. “Both drivers are clearly winners and want to win again this year,” said Whitmarsh. “We expect an exciting season within our team.” In a nod to Mercedes, who will still provide McLaren's engines for the long term despite taking over Brawn, Whitmarsh added: “We know we must be at our best to beat the works team.” Malaysian GP starts earlier This year's Malaysian Grand Prix will start an hour earlier than the 2009 race, which was cut short by a tropical storm with a restart made impossible because of fading evening light at the Sepang circuit. Last year's start at 5 P.M. local time was two hours later than the previous version, a move made to better serve the large television audience for Formula One in Europe. Organizers and fans were left frustrated when a torrential downpour forced the race to be red-flagged after 32 of the 56 laps with Jenson Button awarded the win with half points. Circuit chief executive Razlan Razali demanded a “more suitable time” for the race and he seems to have at least partly got his way with a start time of 4 P.M. local announced at the official launch ceremony for the April 4 race. Organizers are expecting a bumper crowd of 100,000 for race day because of the participation of two teams with Malaysian links - the new locally-backed Lotus and the Petronas-sponsored Mercedes teams.
