McLaren surprised by teams with blown diffusers
While most of the teams brought significant upgrades to the Valencia, McLaren decided to stick it out and come with only minor upgrades. This has left them vulnerable as the others have improved significantly, especially the ones with blown diffusers. Although Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have still posted competitive lap times on the first day.
Lewis Hamilton: MP4-25A-04
P1 programme: 19 laps, 1m41.339s (+.164s), 2nd
P2 programme: 24 laps, 1m39.749s (+.466s), 5th
“The first session looked quite good for us. But it was always going to be interesting to see how quickly the blown-diffuser cars could get up to speed – and they looked very competitive this afternoon, particularly over a single lap. And the grip they appear to have through the high-speed stuff could make them difficult for us to touch.
“Nevertheless, I still think our race pace will be good, and we’ll keep pushing: this weekend is all about us taking as much as we can from the blown-diffuser cars while they have an advantage.
“As for the small misunderstanding with Michael [Schumacher], well, it’s always difficult to find a gap out there. I saw him ahead of me and I thought he was on a quick lap – then, all of a sudden, he slowed down to create a gap from the guy in front. Around here, it’s all about managing the gap between the guy in front and the guy behind. Fortunately, I missed him, so no hard feelings – and I hear he apologised anyway, so it’s all good. There’s no problem.
“Everyone’s always backing up here at the final corner, so it’s a bit like Monaco in that sense. And it shows just how tricky it will be to find a gap in qualifying.”
Jenson Button: MP4-25A-03
P1 programme: 21 laps, 1m41.383s (+.208s), 3rd
P2 programme: 27 laps, 1m40.029s (+.746s), 9th
“It’s hard to get a balance around this circuit, but we changed it throughout P2 and the car feels pretty good now. Our long run was quite promising, too – we were perhaps a little over-cautious at the beginning, so I was able to push at the end.
“I’m reasonably happy, but there are a lot of quick cars out there. The Ferrari's look very fast; so do the Red Bulls, Renaults and Mercedes. But that’s because teams bring out upgrade packages at different points during the season, and we don’t have an upgrade for here, and many teams do. Anyway, it evens out over the season but we’ve just got to fight it out here and get the best out of what we’ve got.
“This is a car we know, so we’ll tweak it and try to make sure we don’t make any mistakes this weekend. It’s going to be a tough weekend for us, but an enjoyable one too, and we should still get some good points from it.”
Martin Whitmarsh, Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, “Today we saw just how relentless the development race has become in Formula 1, with several cars appearing to take a step forward in pace by adopting a blown diffuser and showing, particularly this afternoon, that it seemingly offers a useful performance advantage.
“As we’ve already said, we don’t have any significant upgrades for this race, so the weekend will be more about pushing to maximise the potential of the package we currently have, minimising our mistakes and pushing hard at every opportunity to score the most possible points on Sunday.”
Source: McLaren
