Formula One: McLaren Needs Creative Updates to Claw Back Its Lead
McLaren lost their top position to Red Bull just before heading for the summer break of the season. The three weeks’ break had been filled with restlessness and anxiety, as the last race held at Budapest, Hungary granted victory to the Red Bull driver Mark Webber, thus snatching away the top position of the Drivers’ as well as Constructors’ Championship from McLaren. Now the McLaren team Boss Martin Whitmarsh thinks that the team needs to get a lot more creative in order to claw back its lead from its rivals of the 2010 world championship.
Red Bull, that evidently has the fastest car of the season, currently stands at the top of both the charts with three hundred and twelve points in the Constructors’ Standings, while McLaren follows their tail with three hundred and four points, being shy of only eight points. Though the difference so far is not very high but keeping in mind the difference of the pace of both the cars one can easily imagine how quickly the gap could be widened by the Red Bull.
On the other hand, Red Bull had also snatched the peak of the Drivers’ Standing from the McLarens, as Mark Webber leads the charts now with one hundred and sixty one points, while Lewis Hamilton stands shy of four points from the leader.
Well, one must not forget here that both the charts were initially conquered by the Red Bull, which was handed to McLaren largely due to the infighting of the Austin team, when the two drivers of Red Bull crashed into each other at the Turkish Grand Prix, granting the first one-two finish to the English team.
Now, in the past few weeks, Woking based McLaren is working hard to come up with a solution to imitate Red Bull's blown floor concept, which has proved the biggest strength for the leading team. Making the Red Bull car the fastest on the track and at times simply not chase-able by the McLarens, as was witnessed at the Hungarian Grand prix. Whitmarsh believes that their team engineers would need to be more creative with the development of the MP4-25.
While talking about the car he added that they have worked hard all through the season to keep their car competitive and in many of the races, the car even had shown great pace but with the current situation of the charts, something extra needs to be brought forward. He explained saying that they had not dropped the idea of the diffuser project, rather they are just hoping to invent something new as well.
While talking to an Italian based magazine called Autosprint, Whitmarsh said that, “Creativity is at the heart of the current front wing flexibility of the Red Bull car.” Even though the creation has caused a lot of controversy and speculations, yet this fact could not be denied that this invention has made their car very faster. Due to the new invention, the team is even expected to go through more tough scrutinising tests at Spa-Francorchamps in the forth coming race as well.
At this place, Whitmarsh claims that McLaren has an understanding of the FIA regulations that would not be shared by its competitors. He added that the team is looking forward to coming up with new and advanced technical idea which should not even cause any kind of controversy.
However, while talking about the issues of the rules and regulations of car designing and structuring, he said, "The FIA needs to make this area absolutely clear".
He concluded saying that if clarity does not come; even McLaren could become very inventive and creative as the only restrain for them now is that they do not want to do anything that defies the regulations of FIA.
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