Wednesday, September 3, 2008

'Next two races pivotal to Lewis's campaign'

Re-published from Planet F1
Monday 1st September 2008

Martin Whitmarsh has acknowledged the importance of McLaren winning the next two races and getting the jump on Ferrari before heading into the final stretch of the Championship.

With six races still to be run only two take place in Europe, this weekend's Belgian GP and the following Sunday's Italian race. After that the F1 circus heads overseas for the final run of four flyaway events.

And having watched Lewis Hamilton lose last year's World title at the final hurdle, Whitmarsh admits it's important to both McLaren and their British driver to pull away from Ferrari in the Standings before flying off.

"From a human and physical perspective, these two races are also pivotal to our title challenge," the McLaren CEO said.

"It's vital that every member of the team pulls together to make sure these races pass without undue incident and set us up nicely for the final flyaway races."

In order to maximise Hamilton's chances of winning, starting with this weekend's race at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, McLaren are set to race new aerodynamic developments that they will hope will give the 23-year-old the upper hand.

"We've got a number of smaller aero developments in the pipeline - there's nothing on the car that will be visually very startling, but there's plenty of detail-work," Whitmarsh added.

"We're also focusing on further mistake-proofing our systems: the Championship is going to be a hard-fought slog until the end of the year and we need to leave no stone unturned in our quest for additional performance and improved reliability."

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