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McLaren: Oz win was no fluke

Monday 17th March 2008

McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh has insisted that Lewis Hamilton's race-winning pace in Australia wasn't a fluke - but has warned that Ferrari have the capacity to bounce back after "underperforming" in Melbourne.

Hamilton's victory for the team, which would have been a 1-2 but for Heikki Kovalainen's race being wrecked by the unfortunately-timed deployment of the Safety Car, has been perceived in some quarters as ripping up the formbook. However, Whitmarsh is adamant that McLaren's sensational performance was no surprise - and thus all the more ominous for their rivals.

"We had a solid winter test programme and it's clear we're competitive. I think some pundits believed Ferrari would be stronger than us and, at some tests, they were. By our assessment, though, things were very close between the two teams before we came to Australia," he maintained.

"We knew we had a good basis from the moment we launched the car in early January and we improved it progressively throughout the winter tests. We wanted to retain our ability to extract first-lap performance, but we were also aware of the need to find a way to preserve our tyres better than we did previously. We've made good progress in that area, but I still think we can do more. If you look at our long-run performance during practice, both Lewis and Heikki were very impressive. We always felt we could beat Ferrari here and, as it turned out, they underperformed."

Commenting on Hamilton's description of his victory as "a breeze", Whitmarsh confirmed: "Lewis told us several weeks ago that we had given him a car with which he could win in Australia and, as it turned out, he was absolutely right."

Nor is there any suggestion of the team resting on its laurels. Echoing Ron Dennis' warning that Ferrari can bounce in next week's Malaysian GP, Whitmarsh also confirmed that the team has several developments programmes in the pipeline.

"We expect to have a major upgrade in time for Barcelona, and I'm sure the same is true for most other leading teams. We're encouraged by the performance gains we're expecting there and our goal is to make the car more than a tenth of a second per lap quicker at every race thereafter. That's what you have to do to win world championships nowadays."