Whitmarsh bullish as McLaren addresses Red Bull qualifying pace

Will McLaren close the gap to Red Bull in qualifying in China? That’s certainly the hope of team boss Martin Whitmarsh.

The consensus in the pitlane is that RBR’s qualifying pace stems in part from its apparent ability to run its cars low with no fuel in qualifying and yet still retain a competitive ride height when a full fuel load goes in for the race, despite the rules saying that car settings cannot be changed.

Although he didn’t divulge any details, Whitmarsh says that suspension modifications are in hand that will address that situation at McLaren.

“I think they were very much in a class of their own,” he said of RBR’s pace. “We’re a lot closer now. Their qualifying pace has been very good, we think we know why, and I think that’s something that others will be doing shortly.

“We have some new parts coming for China which will lift us by more than a few tenths. We had six modifications here which were worth 0.3s, and if we can deliver more than 0.3s going to China I think it will be a pretty good effort. And particularly in qualifying.”

Whitmarsh says he has confidence in McLaren’s R&D programme: “I think one of the nice things about it, I sense, to be honest at the beginning of last year we were a long way behind and a little bit lost in terms of the correlation between our tools and what happened on the track.

“This year we’ve got a good hit rate, a good correlation between the tools, therefore if we find something is quicker in analysis and simulation, then it is when we put it on the car. I think we’ve got reasonable momentum at the moment. Who knows? You could come to the next race and someone’s ‘Hallelujah,’ and they take half a second or one second. But I think we’ll be competitive in China.”

Meanwhile Whitmarsh says that Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton were allowed to race each other in Malaysia, where both drivers ran very different strategies. Button started on the soft option tyre and made an early stop prior to a long stint on primes, while Hamilton did the opposite. Their races converged when Hamilton came out of the pits and just beat his team mate in a fraught run around the first turn.

“I was asked by both sides can we race? And I said yes is the answer. Jenson was told to push like hell, because he was going to be racing someone out of the pits, and that was clearly on the radio, and Lewis was told you’re racing Jenson out of the pits.

“We could see that was going to happen, and that’s what we chose to do. Both drivers wanted to beat each other, and it was close. I think as it happened they came out together and Lewis got ahead, in fairness Lewis was on much newer rubber so if he’d popped out behind, he would have been able to get past.”

Whitmarsh says that the decision to split the strategies of the two drivers was a sensible one.

“The view was we thought there would be some rain, there has been every afternoon since we got here. We thought that being on the same strategy as the 20 or 19 cars in front wasn’t likely to get us anywhere. Lewis wanted to go prime and go long, and he was happy with that, and that meant that had we had rain two-thirds of the way through – preferably when Lewis had got through to second place – bingo, we would have looked a genius wouldn’t we?

“It was a reasonable punt, and in any case his pace through the middle part of that race got him through to a solid points finish. With Jenson as soon as we could see he was held, after nine laps because he was on option he had the ability to stop. If he had been on primes he would have had to have sat there, because we couldn’t have pulled him in on a one stop and had the option last.

“I think both guys did a great job to come through to solid points. I think it was probably the right strategy for both of them, and as I say to have done what others were doing, the general strategy, wasn’t really going to do much for us.”