Lewis Hamilton is hoping the ‘significant’ upgrades McLaren are adding to the MP4-25 for the Spanish GP will enable them to close the gap to the front-runners, especially in qualifying.
Although he admitted it would be naive to expect a massive jump in pace considering every team usually bring big updates to the first European race on the calendar.
“We’ve got a couple of fairly significant upgrades coming for this race,” said Hamilton. “And while it would be naive to think that these will move us up the pecking order – because almost all the teams produce a major bodywork update for Barcelona – we’re optimistic that they’ll once again help us to bridge the gap to the leading cars.”
McLaren are hoping their track record in bringing successful developments to the car quicker than other teams will allow them to excel and catch their rivals.
Most notably in 2009, McLaren managed to go from backmarkers to frontrunners all in the space of ten races.
“We’ve proved in the past that we’ve been both extremely capable and prolific at adding performance to the car across the course of the season, so I’m hopeful that we’ll be heading into Barcelona in good shape.”
McLaren will once again put emphasis on qualifying pace, as they did in China in the hopes of getting a good grid position.
“If it’s a dry race, then, realistically, I think it’s going to be harder for us to be up at the front.
“As we did in China, we’ll be putting additional emphasis on qualifying; it will be more important than ever in Barcelona as, traditionally, it’s always been a track where overtaking is very difficult.
“Given that most cars will only be stopping once, we have a less scope for passing, so a good grid position will be vital here.”
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