Friday Report: McLaren: the two Englishmen want to climb even higher

After catastrophic winter testing, the McLaren team achieved their goal: climbing back to the top of the standings in Melbourne, and they appear to be in a good position to be the main competitor to Red Bull Racing this season.

Jenson Button 15th and 2nd

The session this afternoon was clearly better than the morning one. We encountered some difficulties during the first trials; after Melbourne, we chose a certain direction to solve some of our issues, but the track is very different here. We went back on some things, and now everything is more efficient. However, everyone was hindered by the tire grip today, which was very different from what we had in Melbourne. It’s like what we saw during winter testing, so we have good experience with it.

We don’t know with how much fuel load the other teams were running, of course. The important thing is that we have changed some things on the car and that these are steps forward. We feel that we have found the right direction and hope there is more to come.

**__Lewis Hamilton__ 2nd and 3rd __**

« It was interesting today. We are reasonably close to the best times, and I think we have made good steps forward in the car’s set-up. We still have a bit of time to find, but it has been a constructive day. The track conditions were really different compared to the cold in Australia, so the tires don’t last as long. Maybe we’ll see a three-stop race.

The gap between the leading teams is narrowing, so it should be a good race. I hope we will be closer to the best than in the last race, but we have to wait and see.

Martin Whitmarsh

« We made good progress today, especially considering it’s the first time we’ve had such high temperatures with the new Pirelli tires.

In the morning, Lewis and Jenson explained to us that the car was a bit unbalanced, but our engineers worked very hard this afternoon to improve it, and both our drivers were very satisfied with how they felt in their car. As a result, they achieved good times in both short and long runs. We continue to believe that there is still a bit of time to find, and we will work as hard as possible to do our best in the next two days.