Martin Whitmarsh: McLaren have potential to surprise spectators at Melbourne – Formula 1 news
McLaren’s team principal Martin Whitmarsh has recently stated that he is confident his team will exceed its fans’ expectations at the season opening race that is expected to take place in Melbourne, Australia on March 27, 2011.
McLaren had an extremely difficult time testing its new car ‘MP4-26’ during the pre-season test sessions as the team faced a lot of reliability issues in general. However, Jenson Button stated that the MP4-26 has a lot pace and the only major problem the
team is facing right now is reliability that would be taken care of soon.
Whitmarsh admitted that the team expected a bit too much from its new car but stated that making predictions against McLaren is not going to be the best of ideas.
“Over the winter, we set ourselves some extremely ambitious performance targets for MP4-26. Vodafone McLaren Mercedes are an uncompromising team and, as with every car we build, we tend to push development to the limit,” Whitmarsh said.
He added that in some cases, the team has pushed over its limits. Martin believes that pre-season test sessions are meant for testing ultimately and McLaren tested their new car beyond its limits that has been highly instructive for them. As a result, the
team has gathered a lot of useful data about the new car, its handling characteristics and its management of the tyres.
“Do I think our testing pace is representative of the pace we'll show in Australia? No. Do I think we head into the weekend as race favourites? Unfortunately, no. But do I feel that we have the capacity to surprise a few people and be competitive? Very much
so,” Martin stated.
Other than that, he stated that both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are aware that they would have to work extra hard in order enable the MP4-26 to perform at its best.
Lewis Hamilton is confident about his team’s new car, as he believes that it has some positive traits.
Martin agreed with Hamilton’s statement and stated that when the team arrives in Melbourne, everything will start binding together and the team will as a result solve most of its reliability issues before the season opening race in Australia.
It is going to be an entertaining and dramatic season as this is the first time in the history of Formula 1 that five champions are going to race alongside each other in a single season.
It is believed that at least 4 teams are going to compete for the titles namely Red Bull Racing Team, Ferrari, Mercedes GP and McLaren and after the first race of the season, the competitiveness of each team as compared to each other would be revealed more
clearly.
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