Friday, May 8, 2009

Lewis: Liargate didn't distract McLaren

Thursday 7th May 2009

Lewis Hamilton insists McLaren have not been swayed from their task of winning the World title by their recent headline-grabbing controversy.

A little over a week ago McLaren faced the World Motor Sport Council to answer charges relating to the Liargate scandal that saw them thrown out of the Australian GP classifications.

And although the saga made headlines around the world before finally being resolved with a three-race suspended ban for McLaren, Hamilton says at no stage was the team distracted by it.

"I think what's been impressive is the team have not been effected by it," he said during Thursday's press conference in Spain.

"We've been pushing since the test we had here and through past experiences they have been strong together, and we've focused on the primary goal.

"For sure the team and the guys back at factory can focus more on getting the car back to the front and that can only be good."

Already, though, McLaren have made some progress towards achieving that goal, which resulted in Hamilton finising fourth in the most-recent Bahrain GP despite having been roughly three seconds off the pace of the front-runners during pre-season testing at Barcelona.

"When we tested here we felt we would not be too bad, but when we tested we were 2.5-3 seconds behind the leading car so that was a big shock to the system," said the Brit.

"The team has pushed an incredible amount from then on and the progress the team has seen since the first and second days we did here has been phenomenal.

"Fourth in the last race was the result of that, but there is still a long way to go - and we are coming from a long way behind."

Source : Planet F1

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