In the wall: a handy metaphor for McLaren's form
The McLaren Formula One team is looking at effectively writing the 2009 season and car off as a bad job and concentrating its efforts on the 2010 season.
McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh admitted in an interview with the Spanish El Pais newspaper that focussing on next year at the expense of the development of its MP4/24 car is 'is one of the possibilities, but we haven’t yet arrived at that point.'
Despite the fact that the Mercedes team is having its worst start to a world championship since 2004, Whitmarsh isn’t calling time on his team’s hopes for 2009 just yet. 'We are going to all the races with the intention to win,” said Whitmarsh. “Giving up is not our style.'
Hamilton trails Button by 42 points after six races
With the team trailing championship leaders Brawn GP by 73 points, however, and Lewis Hamilton 42 points behind Jenson Button, 2009 does look increasingly bleak for the Woking team.
Whitmarsh was also surprisingly lukewarm about Brawn’s achievements, saying the car was based on Honda’s 2008 development budget, including 'four wind tunnels and hundreds of millions of euros'.
Of course, with the technical regulations for 2010 so up in the air, you do have to wonder exactly what McLaren's designers and engineers are going to focus their efforts on