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McLaren bust-up inevitable - Red Bull

Red Bull expects the realtionship between Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will sour © Getty Images

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• Drivers:
• Jenson Button
• |
• Lewis Hamilton
• |
• Christian Horner
• |
• Sebastian Vettel
• |
• Mark Webber

• Teams:
• McLaren
• |
• Red Bull

Red Bull boss Christian Horner thinks it is simply a matter of time before tempers flare at McLaren and put an end to the "love-in" between its drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

Horner had to deal with in-fighting at his own team after Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel crashed into each other at the Turkish Grand Prix. He said that bickering between team-mates was natural when drivers are fighting at the front of the grid and that a similar situation at McLaren was inevitable before the end of the season.

"Anybody that thinks Lewis and Jenson aren't competitive and won't push each other to the limit is sadly mistaken," Horner told Reuters. "It's inevitable that in a competitive sport they will be pushing each other and perhaps won't be having so much of a love-in when that does happen. It will only take one small incident for things to flare up between the McLaren drivers, I'm sure."

Webber also expects thing to turn sour at McLaren and claimed that the team was putting up "smoke and mirrors" to give the impression that Button and Hamilton were best mates.

"It's not easy to have a beautiful, fuzzy, warm relationship when he [a team-mate] is clearly a competitor," added Webber. "That is absolutely the case at McLaren too, I believe it. They are working hard to put a bit of smoke and mirrors up but those two are racing hard. If you are always racing at the front, inevitably it's going to come.

"I don't want the headlines to be Hamilton and Jenson are going to hit each other this weekend, that's not what I'm saying," added Webber."What I'm saying is that it's inevitable given what's at stake, they are both hungry, both driven. If I don't care, if I'd had no competition about me, no fire and desire about me, I'd get on with Seb like a house on fire."

"We don't hate each other's guts ... but it [the rivalry] is totally natural. You look at say [Lotus drivers] Jarno [Trulli] and Heikki [Kovalainen], there's not much at stake so they are going to get on better. If you look at [Nelson] Piquet and [Nigel] Mansell [at Williams in 1986/87], when you are at the front and both trying to win there is going to be a healthy competitive rivalry there."

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