McLaren duo looking to finish ahead of Mark Webber in Korea
Formula One season is heading into its climax, 3 races are left and the next one is in Korea this weekend. Mark Webber is leading the points table with Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel in 2nd and 3rd place
respectively. The duo of McLaren; Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are in 4th and 5th place respectively.
McLaren have been working extensively on their car between races, and have high hopes from the modifications made. Phil Prew, the chief engineer at McLaren believes that Hamilton and Button will have to beat Mark Webber in the
next race to have any realistic chance of winning the championship.
Mark Webber is on 220 points and sitting pretty at the top, behind him is Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel; both have 206 points. Alonso though has more race wins and is on 2nd place.
Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton trails the league leader by a massive 28 points with 3 races to go, and Jenson Button is further back trailing by 31 points.
Prew said that going on all out attack will be the way to go this weekend. He added that it is imperative that both their drivers end up on the podium, and more importantly should be ahead of Webber.
The next race will obviously be very crucial in terms of the title race, but also because it is a circuit no one has ever driven on before. The Yeongam track is a brand new track and will host its first ever race on Sunday.
Speaking from Korea ahead of the race, McLaren’s team engineer said that he has observed the track with great detail. He added that there are some parts of the track that most teams will be able to make great use of. On the other
hand there are some sharp corners that may not be so enjoyable to teams like Red Bull or Ferrari who prefer long straights. But at the same time there are plenty of long straights as well to cater to the teams who prefer those.
Prew said: "I actually walked the circuit this morning with the other engineers and I was fairly impressed with what I saw," he added. "The track itself, the kerbs and the run-off all looked pretty good.
"To be honest, it's a very good combination of quite a few different sorts of circuit. It has some long straights with big stops, which is not dissimilar to Canada, which I think will favour our car”.
Prew went on to say that the sector two of track is quite similar to the one in Turkey, and said that the McLaren duo actually did quite well in Istanbul. He went on to say that while looking at the final sector of the track he
analysed that it will favour cars that make better use of down-force. Phil Prew said that once again down-force has been something that the team has been working on for a while, and if Hamilton and Button can employ that on the track it may well turn out
to be a good weekend for them.
Recently, few races have not been ideal for McLaren who were leading the driver’s table at midway point of the season. Lewis Hamilton has not been able to get to the chequered flag in 3 of last 4 races, while Jenson Button finished
only 4th in Japan. Prew said that the team is focusing hard on putting the disappointments of the past races behind them, and put all their effort and attention on the final 3 Grands Prix. If Hamilton and Button do actually manage to finish ahead
of Mark Webber it will be interesting to see where Fernando Alonso finishes, because that will really give shape to the intriguing title race.
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