Whitmarsh: McLaren will bounce back

Tuesday 25th March 2008

Martin Whitmarsh insists McLaren have already turned their attention to the Bahrain GP as they look to put a below-par outing in Malaysia firmly behind them.

After both drivers were demoted five places on the grid for impeding Nick Heidfeld and Fernando Alonso during Saturday's qualifying session, Heikki Kovalainen managed to claim third in Sepang, but Championship leader Lewis Hamilton could only finish fifth.

Kimi Raikkonen cruised to victory for Ferrari to get his own title ambitions up and running but it was a disappointing return for the Woking-based team after the ease with which Hamilton dominated in Australia.

But after admitting McLaren under-performed all weekend, chief executive Whitmarsh insisted neither team could claim to hold the upper hand after just two races as the battle looks set to swing back and forth in a similar vein to last season.

"Bahrain's another day, we've got to make sure we perform better there," he said.

"If you look at what happened last year, it swung backwards and forwards in terms of competitiveness and I think that's good for the sport.

"If we do a decent job then hopefully we can be competitive and if we don't perform well Ferrari can beat us.

"It was a less than great weekend but we're leading both Championships so it's not a shabby start to the year, it's something to build on, and we've got to make sure we firm up our game and do a better job in Bahrain and then through to the European season."

However, Whitmarsh did concede that by the time the Formula One campaign moves on from Bahrain to Barcelona, the picture as to how the fight will shape up should be much clearer.

"It's swung quite quickly in seven days but I think the most important point in the season will be Spain," he added.

"I'm sure ourselves, Ferrari and others will have reasonable performance upgrades when we get there."

While the focus has been on the battle between last season's two dominant teams, BMW have quietly made a strong start to the season having picked up 19 points already to trail McLaren by just five in the Constructors' standings.

And Whitmarsh expects the German outfit to push both McLaren and Ferrari much harder this term and have their own say in the destination of both Championships.

"If we hadn't slipped in qualifying, I think we'd have beaten them (BMW) here but we did and they were able to take advantage of it," he said."They're pretty close behind and I think they showed good pace here."

Post to del.icio.us