Australia proved that Vodafone McLaren Mercedes' new MP4-28 was no match to the likes of Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes. With Jenson finishing 9th and Sergio finishing 11th, 2013 has proved to be another of McLaren's bad starts. Lewis Hamilton is probably looking back at McLaren glad he switched after
Lewis' recent reports.
But unfortunately there is more bad news for McLaren fan's however hard the McLaren team try to hide it behind their smiles, due to the logistics for the two first races (Australia & Malaysia) the car's are shipped to the circuits earlier than normal, which in turn that means that when the team provide the car with new updates, getting them to the circuit is extremely rare because the first two races are close together and everything is packed into
containers, moved by the McLaren transit team, straight to the next venue
Malaysia.
So when
the press approached Martin Whitmarsh and questioned him about his chances of winning, The McLaren Team Principal told them: “Clearly, our performance in Australia last weekend was not up to our high expectations and we have been working tirelessly to bring additional performance to the car. But the short turnaround between rounds one and two of the championship means that we’ll arrive in Malaysia with less scope to improve our fortunes."
The whole reason for McLaren's massive drop in performance is due to one major factor. When the 2012 seasons ended, all the teams moved onto researching where the 2012 could be improved. Where as McLaren went with creating a car from scratch. Re-designing the whole chassis of the car, what they like to call a 'Radical Redesign' weather or not it was the right choice, we will soon find out.
McLaren have also been reportedly considering reverting to the 2012 car, although that too, would now be slot slower than the other teams, due to all the other teams having months to research their old cars. Plus they would lose the millions of pounds in research and development in creating the new MP4-28.
So for the time being, McLaren's awful season looks set to continue for a couple of races.
