Friday: McLaren positively assesses its new parts
With a new package including completely redesigned pontoons, McLaren hopes to rectify the situation and compete again for podiums and victories. Innovations that bring a smile to the faces of the men from Woking, even if it's hard to know what the actual progress will be.
Jenson Button – 1st and 8th:
« We accumulated a good amount of mileage today. The conditions weren’t perfect, but the forecast seems the same for tomorrow; so it was a useful session for us and I think we gathered useful data to compare the tires and settings.
For us, trying to make the tires work is one of the main problems, so we spent a lot of time focusing on that – it hasn’t been a complete success, but when everything came together, our pace was good. We still have a lot of work to do to be fast in the rain, but Free Practice 2 was a useful session to give us some direction.
I think we should be happy with the parts we assembled today – most of them worked properly – so it’s good to see improvement. I want to give a big “bravo” to all the guys at the factory, they did a great job. Hopefully, we can see these improvements for the rest of the weekend.
Lewis Hamilton – 2nd and 19th:
The men and women at the factory did an incredible job finishing the parts for this weekend – they all deserve a pat on the back for it. It’s a rather positive step: it’s still difficult to predict precisely what kind of step it has been since we haven’t been able to compare with the old components, but it’s undoubtedly a step forward.
Let’s hope we have more indications as the weekend goes on – although with more bad weather expected for tomorrow, we might not be able to say more until Sunday. Despite that, the car is not bad at all.
It’s tough here in the rain; it’s like driving on an ice rink – with puddles! – but I’m positive that we can do something good this weekend.
