Martin Whitmarsh says that the Turkish GP was McLaren’s worst race of the season after Lewis Hamilton finished 30 seconds behind third placed Fernando Alonso.
Hamilton’s race was badly compromised by a 15s delay in his third pit stop when a wheelnut crossthreaded and he then had to wait while Felipe Massa came in.
“It’s the worst one this season,” Whitmarsh conceded. “But I think I’ve had worse in my career, and I’m sure we’re going to have a lot better as the season goes on.
“I think we can turn around and we will turn it around as quickly as we can. We will bring an upgrade to Spain and keep pushing, as simple as that.”
Whitmarsh said that McLaren suffered from being involved in fights that damaged the tyres, but conceded that Alonso was too.
“If you’re in front and you’re looking after your tyres and you’re driving in that manner, it’s a positive. Conversely the fact is that Ferrari were up there giving Red Bull a tough time. They are doing a good job, they’re very strong, and we’ve got to make sure that – there’s no secret here – we’ve got to improve our car at a faster rate.
“Fernando did a good job, congratulations to him, we’ll make sure we try and jump ahead at the next race.”
He admitted that the pit stop delays were frustrating: “We’ve had the mean average best pitstops of everyone, and then to have a couple of those is disappointing.
“The fact is you’re trying to spin a nut on very quickly, it cross threaded, he hauled off, he went to get the second gun, he felt that was cross threaded so he tried to put it on manually. It will always happen, you will always have, when you’re trying to bang nuts on that fast, a situation where occasionally you have one cross threaded.”
Adam Cooper F1 