Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton worried whether MP4-26 is ready for 2011 or not – Formula 1 news
McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton recently stated that they are concerned about their team’s new car, MP4-26’s performance in the 2011 Formula 1 season.
Both of the McLaren drivers admitted that their team might not get enough time to resolve the problems their new car is going through before the 2011 Formula 1 season begins.
The first race of the 2011 Formula 1 season is expected to take place on March 27 in Australia now as the original idea of holding the Bahrain Grand Prix as the season opener of the 2011 season has been cancelled due to the political unrest in the country.
McLaren’s rivals Ferrari and Red Bull Racing team have impressed the spectators during the pre-season test sessions of the 2011 Formula 1 season but McLaren have been quite disappointing throughout the pre-season test session period up until now. The MP4-26
was launched later than Red Bull and Ferrari’s respective new cars.
“It's tricky because we haven't had enough testing in the car to do proper set-up work, which is disappointing. When you're limited on parts and you have reliability issues, you don't get the testing done. You need to really develop the car,” Button told
the media.
He added that testing has been ‘bitty’ for McLaren during the pre-season test sessions and the team has had some good runs but they have not been able to make enough evaluation in order to make major improvements to their new car. The team has improved but
not enough and according to Jenson, the final pre-season test session that is expected to take place next week is going to be very important for his team.
His teammate Lewis Hamilton agreed with his statement and stated that the team did not get enough time on the track during the first three pre-season test sessions in Valencia, Jerez and Barcelona.
“One day we did only 38 laps. It's nothing major but we have had mechanical issues at the back of the car and that has really hampered us. We have picked up but we are behind on mileage and we can't catch it up on the testing left,” he said.
Hamilton stressed the difficulties his team is going to face before the first race of the season that is expected to take place in Melbourne as he stated that the team will have to do twice as much work with their update package as compared to their rivals
Ferrari and Red Bull Racing.
It is going to be interesting to see how McLaren perform at the first race of the 2011 Formula 1 season in Australia as it would give us an idea of what their car is capable of.
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