'McLaren in emergency talks over performance'
13 March 2009
The McLaren team held a crisis meeting at their base in Woking yesterday, it has been revealed. Lewis Hamilton joined the meeting after returning from the Barcelona test to join team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, Team Principal Martin Whitmarsh and senior members of the team's technical crew.
Having introduced a new scheduled aerodynamic update for this week's Barcelona test - featuring modifications to the car's floor - the MP4-24 was significantly off the pace for both drivers, with Hamilton's final time of Thursday almost two full seconds slower than the fastest from Rubens Barrichello's Brawn entry.
Despite one more four-day test still to come in Jerez next week, Whitmarsh was pessimistic when describing the car's on-track displays so far: "I don't think we have done a good enough job, there is no point hiding from that face - we just have to get our heads down and work hard to fix it. We will rectify the problem as quickly as we can, even though that might not be as quickly as we would like," he is quoted as saying by The Guardian.
The lack of pace of the 'silver arrows' was only emphasised this week by the lap times of the two Brawn cars, as Button and Barrichello are powered by identical Mercedes engines to those in the McLarens. "For the moment we must assume that the Brawn is as quick as it looks and that the McLaren is as slow as we are," Whitmarsh continued. "We believe we do not have the aerodynamic performance that we need, but teasing more speed out of a Formula 1 car very seldom involves a silver bullet. We have to be realistic and pragmatic about this and it will take time to rectify the problem. However, Lewis won the World Championship with us last year and knows we have the potential to do it again."
-GPUpdate.net
