Friday: McLaren has Red Bull in its sights
The weekends follow one another and do not seem to be the same for McLaren. After struggling at the Buddh circuit in India last week, the MP4-17 cars show impressive competitiveness in Abu Dhabi. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finished both sessions of the day in the Top 3 and are positioned as the number 1 challengers to Sebastian Vettel for the remainder of the weekend.
Lewis Hamilton – 1st and 2nd:
« Our car seemed competitive during free practice 1, but it was a bit more challenging for me during free practice 2. It was difficult to achieve a good lap with the soft tires, so we need to work on that to figure out how to make them perform well. »
We anticipated the fact that Sebastian [Vettel] would be quick and – particularly in FP2 – the Red Bull really upped the pace. But as I said, our car was fast this morning and very close to the top of the timesheets all day, so we can build on that. We will work hard tonight, as always, and if I can be ahead of the Red Bulls in qualifying tomorrow, it will be a huge bonus for us.
Jenson Button – 2nd and 3rd:
« Overall, our car performed quite well today, and we are in better shape here than in India last weekend. Everything seems to be working properly, and the car is nice to drive. There are small things we need to improve, but we know what we need to do. »
« It will be crucial to make the soft tires work well in qualifying tomorrow. I wanted to do a lot of laps during my long run today since I had missed track time last Friday in India, and it cost me for the rest of the weekend. I’m happy that our car seems quite good on long runs here, so now we need to focus on understanding how far we can push the tires on a long run. If our race pace can be as fast as the Red Bull’s, then it will be even more important for Sunday’s race to qualify ahead of them on Saturday. »
