World Champion Jenson Button is certain that his McLaren team is going to benefit from the internal troubles at Red Bull Racing.
Following the front wing controversy that overshadowed Mark Webber's victory at the British Grand Prix, Button is convinced that Red Bull Racing is going to suffer from the distraction of needing to gets its house in order. After his fourth-place finish at Silverstone that helped him maintain his second spot in the drivers' championship behind teammate Lewis Hamilton, Button said he reckoned divisions in Red Bull's camp were positive for McLaren.
"It means they're going to be busy discussing where they're going to go from here," he said. "We've got a good relationship here. However much people take the mickey out of how well Lewis and I get on, it works well with our team and it means the guys back in the factory are not worrying about us and how we are with each other.
"They can focus on making our car quicker. We're not quick enough. We're not as quick as the Red Bulls and we need to focus. But we can concentrate 100 percent on making our car go quicker and not worry about politics on the circuit between the two drivers."
Button admitted that he had some sympathy for Webber, after the Australian was left fuming that Red Bull Racing took a new front wing off his car and gave it to teammate Sebastian Vettel.
"I'm proud of the guy," said Button. "He did a good job. Whether the front wing made a difference or not, it was blown up and it's difficult for a driver to go into a race knowing that he doesn't have the same car as his teammate.
"Even if it didn't make his teammate go any quicker, he knows that they chose to put it on his teammate's car and not his. Even if the car's no quicker it still hurts, mentally, so it was a great job from him and he deserved that victory. He did a good job."
Teammate Hamilton has echoed Button's feelings of warmth toward Webber – and said he would never wish to be in the situation that his title rival found himself in.
"I can imagine how he feels," he said. "I wouldn't want to be... if that was me, jeez... I asked him earlier and he said, 'Don't worry, I'm pushing.' He's just doing a job. He's doing the talking on the track. And that's what I would do. But it's not nice.
"When you're in a team you love, people around you, all you want to do is be loved back. I don't know what's going on in the team, or whether we're blowing it all out of proportion. We don't know exactly what's going on. He did say it wasn't right. But he still did the job and that's great for him."
Hamilton says that the internal trouble at Red Bull has simply served to make him happier about the positive atmosphere he has found inside McLaren.
"It [the Red Bull situation] is not encouraging, it just makes us more proud as a team to see that we're doing a solid job – and that the harmony in our team is good. The guys we're mainly competing with, it seems that we have more harmony in our team – and that's why we're leading both championships."