Reinvigorated McLaren eyes final title push from Spa
By Matt Beer
Friday, August 19th 2011, 12:24 GMT
McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh says his squad will be reinvigorated for the world title fight when the Formula 1 season resumes at Spa at the end of the month.
Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button's triumphs in Germany and Hungary respectively have raised hopes that McLaren might be able to at least delay Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull's title celebrations, although the Woking team remains 103 points adrift of RBR in the constructors' standings at present.
"This final stretch of European races will break the back of the calendar, so it's important that we hit them aggressively and confidently before pushing on into the final flyaways," said Whitmarsh.
"The whole team has returned to work feeling refreshed, relaxed and recharged, and I'm confident that we'll see the benefit of that at the racetrack: our engineers and strategists are hungry to get back to business, and our mechanics are fit and ready to continue the excellent progress they have been making all season with fast and reliable work in the garage and the pitlane."
He said McLaren's recent success had given it even stronger motivation and that it had a lot more room and hunger for improvement despite winning the last two races.
"Despite winning three of the last five grands prix, we are still hugely determined to be stronger than before," Whitmarsh vowed. "Time and time again, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has proved its resilience and determination, particularly at this crucial stage of the world championship.
"We are more than ready for this fight and relishing every race."
Hamilton said McLaren's upgrades in the past few grands prix had given both drivers huge faith in the car.
"I think we go into the race weekend in a pretty good place - we've won the last two grands prix and the car feels strong; we've worked hard to improve the set-up, so it's really inspiring confidence at the moment, which means you can push it that little bit further, particularly in qualifying," he said.
Button echoed Hamilton's comments, and added that while his win in Hungary had been achieved in mixed weather conditions, he was sure the car had the pace to win in any situation now.
"It felt great to go into the summer break off the back of the win in Hungary," said Button. "That was a race I think we could just as well have won in the dry as in the damp – which will be worth bearing in mind in Spa, as it'll probably be wet and dry – and everything in between – at some point during the weekend.
"Once again, our aim will be to put pressure on the championship frontrunners, particularly Red Bull. Our car definitely feels really driveable right now, so I don't think this weekend's tyre compound selection will affect us too much. We learnt a lot about the Pirelli medium after the race in Valencia, and I think we've moved on quite a bit since then."
Credit: AUTOSPORT.COM (www.autosport.com)
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