McLaren pushing hard

McLaren travel to Malaysia leading the Formula One constructors championship.

With Kevin Magnussen standing on the podium after his debut race and team-mate Jenson Button finishing in a respectable fourth place. McLaren surpassed Mercedes for points despite Nico Rosberg’s victory.

Following the disqualification for Daniel Ricciardo and Red Bull Racing, McLaren’s weekend got even better with both drivers, points wise at least elevated onto the podium.

‘The fact that we are leading the Constructors’ Championship is a testament to the underlying strength and hunger of the organisation: in Melbourne, we didn’t have the strongest car, but we were able to manage the race superbly: we executed perfect strategies on both cars, Jenson and Kevin each drove faultlessly, and our engineers and mechanics made sure our cars operated with only minimal problems across the whole weekend,’ McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier told Sky Sports.

Boullier of course refers to Mercedes as the strongest car, with Nico Rosberg enjoying a clear performance advantage over the rest of the field.

However, McLaren will be bringing some upgrades to their car for the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend. After a solid winter testing programme, McLaren feel that they are in a good position to build on the solid base that the MP4-29 has previously shown.

Reliability will continue to be the main priority, but McLaren’s focus now shifts to performance with an ‘aggressive’ development push aimed to close the gap to Mercedes and equally as importantly stay ahead of teams such as Ferrari and Red Bull.

‘The aim for Malaysia will be to consolidate the position we currently have: we need to close the gap to the front, and we’ll be pushing aggressively on the development front to ensure that the upgrades we bring to this race do just that. But speed counts for nothing without reliability, and our focus will be to ensure we stay on top of things to ensure we operate both cars across the weekend without any problems.

‘Equally, back at MTC [McLaren Technology Centre], we’re pushing hard to ensure that the supply chain from factory to track is further refined: ours is a battle of constant development; and while we’ve seen one team emerge at the front, it’ll be the constant, iterative developments that will upset the order.