A glimpse at McLaren’s performance in 2012 Formula 1 season until now
McLaren have been deemed as one of the most favourite contenders in the 2012 Formula 1 World Championship and are presently standing at fourth place in the constructors’ rankings with 142 points.
They had the most successful pre-season testing programme this year and their drivers, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have performed quite convincingly in the season until now.
Currently, Button is at 8th place in the drivers’ standings with 50 points. Additionally, he is ahead of Sergio Perez of Sauber and behind Romain Grosjean of Lotus.
The 2009 world champion scored an inspiring win in the season opener held at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia after he qualified for second grid position. Even though, he could not pocket any point in the second race even after beginning from a competitive
grid position. However, he came back well in the third race and secured second podium finish.
Contrarily, the British driver has been struggling with the lack of race pace as he could only score 7 points in the last six races due to poor tyre management and limited downforce.
On the other hand, Hamilton is at fourth position in the drivers’ championship with 92 points. Moreover, he is ahead of Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus and behind the defending champion, Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull Racing.
Furthermore, he has been deemed as one of the most competent contenders in this year’s championship fight as he has performed with admirable consistency. He secured inspiring third podium finish in the first three grands prix and claimed the pole position
in first two of them.
Later, in the Bahrain GP, he could only secure 8th place finish even after taking a start from the second grid position as he struggled with the poor pit stop strategy. Afterwards, although he topped the timesheets in the Spanish GP during the
qualifying, however, he failed to meet the minimum fuel requirement in the car and had to start the race from the end of the grid. Nevertheless, he delivered an amazing performance and successfully limited the damage for his team as he came 8th.
Besides, in the Monaco GP, he secured 5th place finish after setting off from the 3rd grid slot. Later on, he took an incredible victory in the Canadian GP after starting the race from the second grid position.
Conversely, he could not score even a single point in the European GP due to his collision with Pastor Maldonado of Williams and came 19th after beginning from second place in the grid. Over and above, he secured 8th place finish in
the British GP after taking a start from the same grid position.
Although, the Woking based team could not attain competitive results in the last two races. Nonetheless, their team principal, Martin Whitmarsh has asserted that they are confidently looking forward to perform well in the German GP. He also said that they
have planned to launch some major updates in MP4-27 to improve its pace in the forthcoming races.
“As you know Formula One changes very quickly and your fortunes can change from being very, very strong in Canada which we clearly were to a disappointing couple of last races. I think they were unusual; particularly Silverstone was an unusual weekend. Our
thrust is always to keep developing the car, we've got quite a lot of new components and quite noticeable ones on the car that we will have in Germany. I think for everyone not just McLaren - trying to understand and exploit the tyres correctly is proving
quite a substantial challenge,” he said.
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