McLaren are confident that they can get the most out of their updates in Korea, after their Suzuka running was curtailed due to an accident in FP1 from Lewis Hamilton and a rain soaked FP3.
The team’s principal race engineer, Phil Prew, made the assessment during a Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes phone-in.
He also noted that the Woking based team’s expectations are to finish on the podium at minimum, but finishing ahead of title leader Mark Webber is vital.
“I think our target this weekend is very much to get on the podium – and in fact we need to be in front of [Mark] Webber,” said Prew.
“So we need two cars at the front, competing for the front row of the grid in qualifying, and then delivering a race result on the podium. That’s the target.”
In regards to the updates briefly seen in Japan, Prew confirmed they will be used during Friday practice in the hope the team can gain the confidence and then run them during the race.
“We will certainly be running it on Friday, we have that rear wing back here. We also have a modified front wing, so they’re the two big updates that will be visible on the car.
“In addition to that we have some smaller mechanical updates which will be on the car as well and aiming to add to performance.
“Certainly our understanding and knowledge of how it all works with the car and interacts with the rest of the car, we gained some knowledge there. But really we ran out of time at Suzuka to gain the confidence that it was a robust solution to take racing.
“A good clear session on Friday here will give us a lot more track time and we’re optimistic that we can work through a programme to give us that confidence. Obviously our desire and hope is that we can race that with confidence and get the performance out of it that we think is available.”
