Lewis Hamilton says McLaren MP4-27 is stronger than other cars – Formula 1 news
Lewis Hamilton says that McLaren’s new car MP4-27 is relatively stronger than other cars on the grid.
Hamilton believes that the team should expect a podium position at least in the opening race of the season at Melbourne.
McLaren has had a good run throughout the three tests and on the second day of the final pre-season test, Hamilton completed 65 laps with the 9th fastest lap time of the day. Although Hamilton did not make it to the top three time finishes, he still believes
that the car has enough to compete with the best.
Pre-season test days can give a good idea of where the team stands but sometimes it is also misleading when measuring up performance of the car as teams keep on making little tweaks to the cars to better suit the conditions. Hamilton believes that McLaren
have set up a good base with the new car and will be a strong contender for the title in the upcoming season.
“It's stronger than it was last year at this point and with the fuel loads we've been running I think we are relatively strong compared to the others. I'm not necessarily saying we're the fastest but we'll find out when we get to Melbourne,” Hamilton said.
Earlier Hamilton said that the Red Bull’s RB8 is definitely the leader of the pack ahead of the new season and mentioned that Lotus look really good as well. After the second day of the test though he mentioned how well Fernando Alonso drove but admitted
that the new Ferrari car did not look too good on the track when he was following it.
“It was a pretty good day. We improved some things on the car and some KERS tests and certain things like that, but we didn't get a lot of mileage; we had a lot of downtime in between changes so that wasn't the most productive part but nevertheless it was
still a good test,” Hamilton added talking about how the day went.
Heading into the season McLaren looks to be a strong contender for the world title. The season begins on March 18, 2012 with the Australian Grand Prix as the opening race.
Tags: