McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh says he is hopeful that the team will unlock additional performance from the MP4-25 'sooner rather than later. as the F1 season prepares to get back underway at Spa next weekend.
The team introduced a number of upgrades prior to the summer break, most notably a blown diffuser, but appeared to fall behind
Red Bull and
Ferrari in the races in Germany and Hungary.
While the summer shutdown limited the time available to work on the car prior to Spa,
McLaren has worked hard to make additional improvements to aid
Jenson Button and
Lewis Hamilton in their championship challenge and Whitmarsh said he hoped that he drivers would see the benefit sooner rather than later.
“The summer break was extremely welcome for a number of reasons,” he said. “Firstly, it provided the whole team with a much-needed rest period after some particularly relentless races; secondly, it gave our engineers time for consideration and thought ahead of the closing run of races; and, finally, the downtime proved very useful in enabling us to carry out some maintenance work to our wind-tunnel, which should improve its correlation.
“After a disappointing Hungarian Grand Prix, we are pushing hard to regain the performance relative to our rivals that we had enjoyed earlier this season. While we believe our recent upgrades have given us a downforce improvement, it appears that the package hasn't yet delivered to its full potential, particularly in terms of providing the drivers with a consistent, confidence-delivering platform.
“We were able to carry out some useful evaluative tests during practice in Hungary, which provided us with some useful data and avenues for experimentation. And we'll take that programme further in Spa, running floor rakes during practice to supply us with more information.
“As we've always stated, we believe there are some large areas of performance locked within the car and its recent upgrade, and we are confident that our solid-engineering approach will enable us to fully unlock them sooner rather than later.”
