Pedro de la Rosa thinks that McLaren must start thinking about 2012

Pedro de la Rosa, who found a role as a test driver at McLaren at the beginning of the season, believes it’s time for the Woking team to abandon any hope of a title this season and fully concentrate on the next season.

Maybe it’s time to forget about the drivers’ championship and consider the seven remaining races as seven finals, seven independent races where the sole objective must be to win them all, the Spanish driver shared on the site formulasantander.com. By stopping the calculations and accepting that there is already a virtual winner for the world championship (this season), we can start thinking about 2012 and how to prevent Red Bull’s domination from extending another year.

For the moment, Jenson Button, the highest-ranked McLaren driver in the drivers’ championship, is 110 points behind the leader, Sebastian Vettel, with only seven races remaining, meaning a maximum of 175 points to be scored. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the reigning world champion can be caught, even if it remains mathematically possible.

Moreover, there is no guarantee that by starting to focus earlier on the 2012 single-seater, it will enable McLaren to catch up with or even surpass Red Bull Racing. It remains to be seen whether Martin Whitmarsh, the head of the Silver Arrows, will follow Pedro de la Rosa’s advice…