No quick fix for McLaren, says Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton warned yesterday that there will be no quick fix to the performance shortfall of his new McLaren Mercedes race car, in comments that underline the challenge that the British world champion faces to retain his title.
Speaking on the Malaysian island of Langkawi where Hamilton is having a rest before he heads to Kuala Lumpur for this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix, the man who became the sport’s youngest champion last year said that the first two races, in Australia and Malaysia, are so far from home that it is making it hard for the team to work on improvements.
“The Malaysian Grand Prix is the second of two back-to-back flyaway races, and it’s difficult for any team to make big changes to the car when it’s so far away from the factory and there’s so little time,” Hamilton said. “But we’re targeting upgrades and improvements at every race, so I hope they’ll have a benefit. I know people are hoping for a night-and-day change in our car’s pace, but that’s not going to happen this coming weekend.”
Hamilton believes the circuit at Sepang in the oil palm forests outside the Malaysian capital is going to be a tougher test for the new car than the street circuit in Melbourne, where Hamilton drove an impressive race to come from 18th on the grid to finish third behind the all-conquering Brawn GP cars of race-winner Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. “Technically speaking, Sepang is a harder test of a Formula One car than Albert Park, so we can’t realistically expect a repeat of the result we saw in Melbourne," Hamilton said. "But the aerodynamicists and engineers are working round the clock back at Woking to make us competitive. We’re taking huge steps forward and I’m confident we’ll show definite signs of progress sooner rather than later,”
The problem with the McLaren is the airflow across and through the car which is not producing the downforce required to allow the British ace to drive with the fluency and red-hot pace which marked his racing in his first two seasons in the sport. The difficulty for the team is to try to work out precisely where the problem is and then make alterations in the shape of the chassis and the wings to improve matters.
Bits of beautifully-crafted carbon-fibre bodywork are on their way from the factory at Woking to the Malaysian capital but these are likely to only be steps on the way to a solution.
During the race in Melbourne, Hamilton said he was constantly in danger of losing the back end of the car as he tore through the corners on the Albert Park circuit. This nagged away at his confidence and the degree to which he was prepared to commit himself for fear of losing control. Ironically, these are just the sort of problems which Button had to contend with when driving an obdurate Honda car at the back of the field last season.
“It felt like there were four or five times through each corner where the car could snap away from you,” Hamilton explained. “And I was pushing so hard, and you knew it was coming, you were waiting for it, worrying about it, knowing that the car was going to break away and you were going to have to wrestle it back under control. That happened in every corner for 58 laps - it was an exhausting race for me.”
The British champion is delighted with his drive in Australia, however, where he had targetted eighth place as his best possible result before the race. On the day, he drove aggressively but never put his car at risk in a performance which, Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal described as the drive of a champion.
“It was one of the most unexpected results of my Formula One career and, yeah, I think it was one of my best drives too,” said Hamilton. “I’m a fighter, I’ve never given up at any stage of my motorsport career - both on and off the track - and last weekend was the same. I pushed like crazy on every single lap of the race, always looked for the gap and worked with the team over the radio to find every possible way of making us go quicker.
"This was a fantastic result for me, but also a brilliant team effort - our strategy was perfect, the input from the pitwall was superb and everything came together really well.”
The race had reminded him of one of the earliest lessons he had learnt as a small boy racing karts under the watchful eye of his father Anthony who now manages what has, so far, been his glittering career in Formula One.
“I learnt to never, ever, ever, give up. We showed in Brazil last year (where Hamilton secured his title last November) that we would always fight until the very end, and we showed it again in Melbourne. I’ll never give up when I’m in the cockpit - I want to race as hard as I can and I’m looking forward to getting closer to the front and mixing it with the leaders again.”
Source:the times