No improvements felt by McLaren despite multiple upgrades
With both drivers equipped with new chassis, the team kicked off the European season with several key bodywork upgrades: most notably a new front wing, rotating rear hubs and a new floor. Today was spent firstly evaluating the new front wing before focusing on the improvements to the floor.
Lewis Hamilton:
MP4-24-05
P1 programme
21 laps – 1m23.077s (14th)
P2 programme
31 laps – 1m22.809s (13th)
"We’re still a long way away and I didn’t feel any improvement. I think it’s going to be hard work to get into Q3 tomorrow. We’re pushing but unfortunately the upgrades we tried didn’t work for me and the car doesn’t feel like it’s improved. We lose a lot of time in Turns Three and Nine because we can’t carry the speed through the high-speed corners like other teams. But we’ll battle our way through."
Heikki Kovalainen:
MP4-24-02
P1 programme
17 laps – 1m23.522s (19th)
P2 programme
29 laps – 1m22.876s (14th)
"We had a gearbox issue in the first session which was caused by a hydraulics problem. Fortunately, the team was able to fix this shortly after we started second practice so I didn’t lose too much time. I’m really happy with the progress we made. The new parts we have on the car obviously seem to work: I think we’ve improved the technical package since Bahrain but we need to wait until tomorrow to compare our pace with our rivals’.”
Martin Whitmarsh – team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes:
“Inevitably, when you come to a circuit with a big package of modifications that need assessing in a very short period of time, you get some successes and some failures. But coming into this weekend, we’ve been realistic and disciplined: we always knew this would be a challenging circuit, but we’ve gathered a lot of data – and that will enable us to study our performance overnight and enhance the car for tomorrow. Are we as quick as we want to be? No. Do we believe we can get through into Q3 tomorrow? Yes, we do.”
Norbert Haug – vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport:
"Our laptimes during our race simulation in the afternoon looked better than two months ago at the final winter test. The positive is this proves that we are working in the right direction; the negative is that we are still not quick enough to fight for podium finishes – in fact, it will be tough to enter Q3 tomorrow and to start the race in the Top 10. Also on this circuit, our KERS hybrid is a good help for improving our laptimes and hopefully KERS will be even more of a help at the race on Sunday as only four of 20 racers are running the system here."
