Despite serious roadblocks, McLaren team boss stays optimistic
The season started pretty well for the McLaren team, which was able to set a great pace with a refined car right from the beginning. It came up with an innovative F-duct after the first few rounds and as a result was able to stand out from all its rival teams, especially the Red Bull and Ferrari. However, with the season advancing, the team hasn’t been able to keep its car competitive, eventually falling behind in pace.
Red Bull was the first one to walk past in terms of its technical changes as the Austrian team kept leaping fast and high. At first, the introduction of blown diffuser proved costly for McLaren while on the other hand, it strengthened the Red Bulls who were able to grab the top place in both championships due to their unmatched speed. As the Formula One caravan prepares to enter its next round at Spa, Belgium, the McLaren team Principal Martin Whit marsh, while expressing his optimism said in an interview that it is only a matter of time before McLaren would be able to outperform all the others with the brilliant updates being introduced in the MP4-25. He elaborated that the car has some large areas of performance still locked in it that hadn’t been brought forward yet and the latest up gradations would make it perform to its full potential. He added that as the factory gets back to work after the long summer break, its solid-engineering approach would bring forward some great features that currently just need final finishing work.
However, many expert analyses appear contrary to Wit marsh’s hopes. According to them, at a time when the Red Bull and Ferrari have completed working on their ‘flexible’ front wings, McLaren is still perfecting its blown-diffuser concept. This is a task that its rivals have already done before. Whit marsh accepted that his car’s down force had recently been upgraded although there is still more to be done in this respect.
The McLaren team was not able to conduct its important tests required to finalize the changes made in the car due to the summer break but now it hopes to start anew at the Spa-Francorchamps with further testing of the recently updated MP4-25. The team engineers have reported that they were able to make some very useful calculations and evaluations during the practice sessions in Hungary that have provided them with good data to determine their strategies for further changes.
Moreover, the McLaren team is also optimistic regarding its maintenance work on the wind tunnel, which it thinks would improve the car’s correlation. Also, it intends to carry out some strict front wing rigidity tests during Spa. The team driver Jenson Button told the media that in case the bodywork rules are clarified, the point’s difference amongst the top teams could be further lowered. He hoped that the Spa and Monza would suit his team better than the Hungaroring. However, he concluded by saying that it’s still important that McLaren regain the momentum it had reached earlier this season.
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