McLaren targets remaining races
by Bruce Hepburn 11 October 2011, 09:02
Following Jenson Button's dominant win in Japan, McLaren feels it has a car capable of winning this year's remaining
four races.
Button scored the team's fifth victory of the season at Suzuka, showing that the dominant Red Bull team was not
unbeatable.
“I think we’ve felt for the last few races we’ve got a race car we can win races with,” said Whitmarsh on the
ITV web site. “That’s what we’ve been saying for these last five races, they’re all winnable, and we’d like to
win them. We’re in that interesting situation where the [drivers’] championship [is over]; there’s a good fight in
the drivers’ championship for second place now. That doesn’t inspire many of us, but I think we’ve got to
concentrate on that. The constructors’ [championship] looks reasonably settled in terms of the top four places, so I
think it’s now about winning races and we will concentrate on that. We like winning races and this is our fifth this
year, if we win the next four then we’ll consider it a half-respectable season.”
The MP4-26 featured a new rear wing for Suzuka, but further development is unlikely now that McLaren is already
heavily focussed on next year's car.
“There’s very limited development we’re going to be doing on this year’s car now, we’re concentrating on
next year," said Whitmarsh. "That’s the programme that’s going on at Woking. We in the field just want to
win races. If your car’s quick enough at the beginning of next year you’ll win races, if it’s not you’ll
struggle, and we’ve got to make sure we are quick enough at the start of the year.”
