Should McLaren abandon the MP4-28 and use the 2012 MP4-27?
Given the performance displayed by the McLaren MP4-28 in Australia, some suggest that McLaren might abandon its 2013 concept to resume development of last year's car. A possibility, according to Martin Whitmarsh, who indicates that McLaren will nevertheless continue to work on the MP4-28.
As the first assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each team takes place, McLaren’s performances in Australia are worrying and disappointing. Indeed, while the technical regulations have changed little between 2012 and 2013, and even though they had one of the best cars at the end of the season, if not the best, the Woking team decided not to rest on its laurels by making radical changes to their car.
Introducing front suspension pull rods, imitating Ferrari, the British team seems somewhat lost with their single-seater, just like its Italian rival last season. As a result, some are wondering if McLaren would be better off returning to familiar ground and thus reusing last year’s car. When asked about this by Autosport, Martin Whitmarsh, the team principal of McLaren, did not rule out any possibility: « It’s possible, but I think the best thing for us right now is to work and understand the car. The season is incredibly long: if we want to win races and the championship, we have to develop the car throughout the year. We wanted to give ourselves that opportunity and probably if we had stuck with last year’s concept, we might have been stronger here, today, but we made a decision. We will work on this and we will have a car that has more potential than last year. »
The British team obviously takes the Scuderia Ferrari’s journey in 2012 as an example: Fernando qualified one and a half seconds behind the best here last year, and he almost won the championship, so it’s possible for a team like us to make up the gap [but] I don’t know if our situation is identical to theirs, analyzes Jenson Button. The fact that the qualifications take place in the dry is probably not a good thing for us because with rain, we can be higher on the grid, but it can also be good for us to see where we stand. After the race, we’ll know where we are, what our strengths and weaknesses are because there are always some, and it’s about knowing how many of each. And the 2009 world champion concludes: We are not where we wanted to be at the beginning of the season, this is not where we were last year at the same time, but it’s a very different situation.
However, McLaren can also rely on its own experience, as it has already, in its recent history, turned unfavorable situations to its advantage. Indeed, some will remember that in 2009, McLaren was one of the first “victims” of the change in technical regulations before finishing the season with a better car than the world champion Brawn and was on par with Adrian Newey’s Red Bull. In 2011, pre-season tests had hinted at the worst for Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, who, thanks to significant technical reassessment, saw the pumpkin turn into a carriage at the Australian Grand Prix. The Woking team then went on to claim six victories during a season overwhelmingly dominated by Sebastian Vettel and his Red Bull.
