McLaren aims to improve at Montreal
Despite a promising start to the 2014 season, McLaren failed to hang on to the success and fell back into the midfield. The Woking-based squad now wants to turn their fortunes around and carry on the momentum they got in the Principality last weekend.
McLaren endured a though season last year when they failed to step up onto the rostrum after they had competitive cars for decades. After Martin Whitmarsh was demoted, Ron Dennis took over the regime and signed Lotus' Eric Boullier as team principal.
Boullier praises his team for their efforts, but concedes the performance showed in Monaco was mainly down to the track layout. "I think the double points finish [in Monaco] was mostly due to the track layout which suited our car - but it also rewarded the hard work we are doing here in Woking".
"We have been bringing upgrades regularly since the beginning of the season, but clearly we had a strong push since Barcelona and you can see that on the car. In Monaco we had a lot of mechanical upgrades on the car. That [will continue] through the next few races.
With Canada coming up on the schedule next weekend, McLaren targets to raise the bar again. The track in Montreal should suit their car with its chicanes, high kerbs and the never-ending straights which should be a bless for the Mercedes-powered cars. "Canada should suit our car as well - the track has a lot of high-speed straights, but no real high-speed corners and a lot of chicanes. So we should be in better shape in Canada than we were in Monaco."
The Frenchman agrees with quadruple World Champion Alain Prost who said a couple of days ago the teams with the richest history in F1 like Ferrari, McLaren and Williams needed to carry out an in-depth analysis about their approach to racing and organization because newly-established squads Red Bull and Mercedes had the upper hand over them due to their modern thinking about team structure and way of working.
"Yes, I agree with the comments of Alain", Boullier said. "This is what I have been doing since I started, (Our progress) is partially due to the change of direction, and what we have been picking at in terms of performance".
