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Friday, 21st March 2008

McLaren in charge at end of opening day in Sepang - but is rain just around the corner..?

“With these back-to-back races at the start of the season, it is often difficult to keep up the momentum of our relentless development pace,” underlined McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh. “Subsequently both drivers were evaluating several new parts on top of the set-up and tyre evaluation work that is customary during the Friday sessions.

“Despite the small gearshift problem on Lewis' car this morning, we are pretty comfortable with the performance of the MP4-23 here. Obviously there is always room to improve and the engineers will be working hard this evening to find those extra tenths, but overall we are reasonably happy.”

“We did, as originally planned, a lot of laps today and Lewis, Heikki and their teams found a good set-up and achieved quick and consistent lap times on both types of tyres,” concurred Mercedes-Benz Motorsport Vice-President Norbert Haug. “However, this will probably be of little help for tomorrow's qualifying and Sunday's grand prix as the weather forecast is predicting rain, but we should be well-equipped in those circumstances too.”

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