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Formula 1
F1: Whitmarsh Excited By New MP4-27
Team principal Martin Whitmarsh likes the McLaren car's looks...
Lewis Hamilton (Left), Martin Whitmarsh,(Center) Team Principal, McLaren and Jenson Button (Right) at the unveiling. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
The McLaren MP4-27 certainly looked the part at its launch at the team’s factory Wednesday, and team principal Martin Whitmarsh admitted that having an attractive car was a good starting point – and said that he doesn’t expect to see a repeat of the disastrous test program that the team had last year.
At the front, the team has managed to avoid incorporating a step or ‘ears’ to accommodate suspension mounts when adjusting to the new nose height regulations.
“It looks beautiful at the moment, but cars really do look beautiful if they win races,” said Whitmarsh. “And, you know, the beauty is more than skin deep. I think there's tremendous engineering underneath. A lot of thought has gone into this car and, really, refinement. I'm sure it will look different when it gets to Australia.
“That's the nature of Formula One these days, we're constantly evolving the product, but I think it's nice, when you're going to have to stand around a car for quite a long period of your life during a year, if it looks good at the outset that helps us.”
Whitmarsh conceded that it will be impossible to judge how good the car is until the first race weekend.
“Firstly, we won't really know until Australia qualifying, you know, through the practice and testing sessions that we have in front of us — we'll be embarked on a whole range of programs, but turning to the real point we had, by — well, by anyone's standards, and McLaren's standards, an abysmal winter testing session last year, where we didn't have reliability or pace, and I think it was really a tribute to a fantastic team work and everyone within the organization to respond that.
“And in fact we arrived in Australia in reasonable competitive position, which I think surprised a lot of people. But it was a relatively stressful process, so I'd be much happier to not be fighting those sorts of issues. And I think we've put a lot of work into this car and we don't think we're going to have a repeat of last winter.”
Whitmarsh said he was happy with the progress the team had made during the winter.
“Inevitably, there are creative brains out there that seek to find the eureka moment that is going to find a second's worth of performance. Sadly, in Formula One, to some extent those eureka moments of seconds of performance increment are very limited and, you know, nowadays Formula One is about refining every single detail part, so a one or two percent performance differentiation from the front to almost to the back of the grid is made up of tiny, tiny fractions of performance increments from just about every component within the car, every system. But if you come up with something which is performance, you're going to chase it.
"This year I think we've been not cautious, but I think the way the development has happened, I think we're finding good performance, we've set ourselves some tough targets that we think, if achieved, will allow us to win the World Championship. We haven't reached those targets yet but fortunately we're not at the first race, but the progress and trend is towards meeting those targets, so I think we will meet the targets.
“During the year, every fortnight we have a performance calibration, you know, ‘Where are we relative to our competitors?’ They're off the radar screen, we've been flying blind now for a few months, and that's the exciting thing.
“You have to now set your own targets; we've got our engineers who have to have their own moments of inspiration, and they've got to develop and work hard to make this car competitive. So, you know, I think we set targets which we believed were going to be tough. I think we will get there. We'll see as the season progresses.”
“It isn't about testing, it's not just about the first race; you have to improve the car through every single race throughout a season to sustain a championship campaign these days and that's something I think we're quite good at, and I think, providing we have a good and competitive start to the year, then there's no doubt we'll be in there for the fight for the championship at the end.”
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
At the front, the team has managed to avoid incorporating a step or ‘ears’ to accommodate suspension mounts when adjusting to the new nose height regulations.
“It looks beautiful at the moment, but cars really do look beautiful if they win races,” said Whitmarsh. “And, you know, the beauty is more than skin deep. I think there's tremendous engineering underneath. A lot of thought has gone into this car and, really, refinement. I'm sure it will look different when it gets to Australia.
“That's the nature of Formula One these days, we're constantly evolving the product, but I think it's nice, when you're going to have to stand around a car for quite a long period of your life during a year, if it looks good at the outset that helps us.”
Whitmarsh conceded that it will be impossible to judge how good the car is until the first race weekend.
“Firstly, we won't really know until Australia qualifying, you know, through the practice and testing sessions that we have in front of us — we'll be embarked on a whole range of programs, but turning to the real point we had, by — well, by anyone's standards, and McLaren's standards, an abysmal winter testing session last year, where we didn't have reliability or pace, and I think it was really a tribute to a fantastic team work and everyone within the organization to respond that.
“And in fact we arrived in Australia in reasonable competitive position, which I think surprised a lot of people. But it was a relatively stressful process, so I'd be much happier to not be fighting those sorts of issues. And I think we've put a lot of work into this car and we don't think we're going to have a repeat of last winter.”
Whitmarsh said he was happy with the progress the team had made during the winter.
“Inevitably, there are creative brains out there that seek to find the eureka moment that is going to find a second's worth of performance. Sadly, in Formula One, to some extent those eureka moments of seconds of performance increment are very limited and, you know, nowadays Formula One is about refining every single detail part, so a one or two percent performance differentiation from the front to almost to the back of the grid is made up of tiny, tiny fractions of performance increments from just about every component within the car, every system. But if you come up with something which is performance, you're going to chase it.
"This year I think we've been not cautious, but I think the way the development has happened, I think we're finding good performance, we've set ourselves some tough targets that we think, if achieved, will allow us to win the World Championship. We haven't reached those targets yet but fortunately we're not at the first race, but the progress and trend is towards meeting those targets, so I think we will meet the targets.
“During the year, every fortnight we have a performance calibration, you know, ‘Where are we relative to our competitors?’ They're off the radar screen, we've been flying blind now for a few months, and that's the exciting thing.
“You have to now set your own targets; we've got our engineers who have to have their own moments of inspiration, and they've got to develop and work hard to make this car competitive. So, you know, I think we set targets which we believed were going to be tough. I think we will get there. We'll see as the season progresses.”
“It isn't about testing, it's not just about the first race; you have to improve the car through every single race throughout a season to sustain a championship campaign these days and that's something I think we're quite good at, and I think, providing we have a good and competitive start to the year, then there's no doubt we'll be in there for the fight for the championship at the end.”
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
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