McLaren endured a disastrous start to the F1 season in Australia with Jenson Button and Sergio Pérez finishing 9th and 11th respectively.
Team boss Martin Witmarsh says he is confident McLaren can move up the ladder but admits there will be very little chance of making any improvements to the cars ahead of the next race in Malaysia.
“We have to be realistic,” Whitmarsh said in Melbourne. “I hope we can make some progress and we’re going to be incredibly productive over the next few days to get it done. We really need to learn more about our car and solve pressing problems. The car is not good enough at the moment and this is not the desired result. I’m sure we’ll figure it out. We were not able to deal with the car as quickly as we wanted before, but we will work hard on it.”
“We struggled to have a proper understanding in car testing. This year’s winter testing was very strange and I think we did it a little worse than expected.”
According to proff1 website.en, Whitmarsh admitted the scale of McLaren’s struggle in Australia has become shocking.
“To some extent. I hope we are not too far from the leaders in Malaysia, but I do not promise that we will be higher than them in the standings. I think we need to be realistic about what can be done in a few days before we get there.”
Going back to the MP4-27 would be a big decision, he said: “This is not a big opportunity for Malaysia! I think at the moment we should work hard on a new car. We know that it has huge potential and opportunities for its development. But, as I reported earlier, there are some issues that we need to sort out.”
“We’ve all had cars in the past, or many of us have, unfortunately, that are difficult to get the job out of, get it out of, even though some numbers are pretty impressive. This car seems to be difficult in that regard, so we need to work on it, understand it and fix it.”