McLaren will have to be reliable if they want to win the title – Martin Whitmarsh
After some major transmission issues in Lewis Hamilton’s car at the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend, McLaren’s team principal Martin Whitmarsh has instructed his team to focus on his team’s reliability for the final three races of the season in order to
ensure a good performance.
Lewis was forced to get a gearbox change during the grand prix at Suzuka due to which he got a five-place mandatory grid penalty. He lost third gear on his new gearbox but somehow managed to shift between the fourth and seventh gear to finish the race safely.
Because of a fifth place finish at Suzuka, Lewis is now 28 points short of leader Mark Webber and that is a big problem for McLaren as it would require a minimum of 2 races to recover this deficit. With just 75 points up for grabs in just 3 races, McLaren
will have to think of something big if they want to recover and win the title. However, Whitmarsh still believes that the championship is within the team’s reach and they can still come back to win the title.
"For the final three races, we've got to make sure we have 100% reliability. Lewis finished this race 28 points behind the leader in the drivers' championship, with Jenson [Button] trailing by 31. With 75 points to play for in the drivers' championship,
and 129 in the constructors', our title challenge is still very much alive,” Whitmarsh said.
The team boss believes that if the team keeps on pushing and developing the car, nothing would stop the team in their fight for the championship at Abu Dhabi.
He believes that their car has been competitive but was out of position due to the problems Hamilton was facing and Button’s strategy was not strong enough.
“The biggest positive we can take away from today's result is that both drivers clearly demonstrated significant pace against that of our rivals - and that's a motivating force that we'll take with us into the final three races of the championship,” he added.
However, Jenson Button is not as confident as his boss is about the car and believes that the team will only succeed if they take a major performance upgrade with them to Korea. McLaren’s new rear wings and F-duct package flopped in Japan so the team will
have to ensure a solid test run for the Korean Grand Prix.
“If we don't turn up in Korea with some big improvements it will be almost impossible. I would like to think we do not have to hope Red Bull crash or have reliability issues and we have a car to challenge them. But when they have the pace they had here,
they can cruise it,” said the reigning world champion.
However, the team cannot complain about luck. Red Bull has also had its bad days as Vettel threw away 75 easy points this season. It is still any man’s game and one can expect anything this season.
Lewis Hamilton was also satisfied about his chances as compared to the Red Bull drivers. He believes that the team does not require any podiums in the rest of the season. They must aim to win if their rivals are facing problems. Nevertheless, if Red Bull
finishes all the races, then McLaren has no chance of winning.
Lewis was disappointed with his past couple of performances and he believes this weekend was the worst of them all. He had an ear infection all throughout the week and was deaf in his left ear, making it very difficult for him to concentrate. He was delighted
to have finished the race as it seemed that it was quite impossible for him with the infection and the problems his car was having, so Hamilton got the best possible result in the bag for his team.
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