Melbourne, Mar 22(NI): McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh hopes that his team's cars will be one second faster in Sunday's Formula One season-opening Australian Grand Prix than in the final pre-season test in Barcelona.
Whitmarsh said that their cars had been off the pace of front-runners Red Bull and Ferrari, but dramatic alterations have been made.
"The changes are intended to deliver more than a second in performance. We hope the risks we have taken come off and we are competitive," the BBC quoted Whitmarsh, as saying.
"We had some very creative ideas, some of which could have worked spectacularly well, but in order to work spectacularly well they had to be sufficiently durable to be raceable - and frankly some of our solutions weren't. So, we had to go a little back, but in doing so we found some interesting performance. I think it will still be a challenging weekend," he added.
Whitmarsh further said that the extra two weeks of preparation because of the postponement of the Bahrain Grand Prix has been hugely useful.
"I wasn't satisfied with our reliability or pace in the tests this year. We've taken a risk to quite significantly change the car going into Australia, and if it [the car] is reliable and quick, then the extra two weeks will have been very crucial indeed," Whitmarsh said. (ANI)
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