McLaren back on track

After the opening two races of the Formula One season were a bit of an embarrassment for McLaren the team believe they will be back on track in China.

Over the course of the winter teams adopted one of two approaches for the upcoming season, with massive regulation changes in the pipeline for 2014, most teams opted to just evolve their 2012 cars due to the limited regulation changes.

This was certainly the approach that Red Bull took and one that many believed McLaren would take as they ended last season so strongly. But instead McLaren took a different route, designing an almost brand new car for the new season.

They knew that it would perhaps put them on the back foot going into the season, but poor performances in Barcelona in the winter tests would have proved a shock.

Their performances in Australia and Malaysia proved to be even a bigger blow.

Jenson Button finished ninth in Melbourne while a botched pit-stop ended his race in Sepang, while Sergio Perez has finished 11th and 9th in his first two races of the season since switching from Sauber [who finished 8th in Malaysia].

But a couple of weeks break in between Malaysia and China has given McLaren the chance to analyse the data and work out the problems with the car.

‘It has not been an ideal start but I believe in the team and I believe in this car, We know where the problems are and I believe we’re on the right track now.’ said McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale to the BBC.

One of the benefits of building a new car is having a larger scope for development throughout the season, something that McLaren highlighted as a major reason behind their thinking and the first steps of that will be seen in China as they bring upgrades to the track for the first time.

‘We’re taking a number of upgrades to China, some are part of a routine upgrade package and some are in response to what the car is doing at the moment.

‘So there is a lot of work to do on Friday practice as we learn more about the car and learn if any of the upgrades work. It’ll be a very busy day for Sergio and Jenson.