McLaren believe their best chance at winning the title is to push the limits of their new car, rather than focussing on reliability, which can often stagnate development.
The admission from team principal Martin Whitmarsh may come as a surprise given how their 2012 season panned out. They started and ended with the quickest car, but reliability and errors saw them fail to capitalise on the cars speed.
That hasn’t put them off pushing the limits and Whitmarsh says that’s what they’ll do again, confident they’ve overcome the pit-stop problems which cost them countless points.
“You can never be as confident as you’d like to be with a new car,” he said. “If it’s stable and reliable, typically you want to push it further, make it quicker, lighter and more aerodynamic.
“We’ve been working hard with [engine supplier] Mercedes-Benz on some of the issues we saw last year, and we’ve been working internally as well.
“We are constantly vigilant but we must not become so obsessed by the pursuit of reliability that we don’t change the car to improve it.”
He also believes they have made the right decision in starting from scratch with the MP4-28, rather than evolving its predecessor, which has given them greater opportunities to unlock hidden pace.
“You have to constantly develop the car over the course of the season – and [by starting from scratch] we’ve given ourselves a platform to do that.”
Discussion about this post