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29 July 2010

McLaren engineering director Paddy Lowe admits that there is still plenty more to come from the team’s new blown diffuser after the part was given its race debut at Hockenheim last week.

After the decision was taken to remove the part following Friday practice at Silverstone, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button both ran with the new floor throughout the weekend in Germany as McLaren looked to get closer to Red Bull in terms of outright pace.

While he admits that the Woking-based team was behind its rivals when it came to getting the part fitted to its cars, Lowe insisted there was still plenty of performance to come from the blown diffuser and said the team hoped to be closer to Ferrari and Red Bull in Hungary this weekend.

“We’re a couple of races behind Ferrari in its introduction and obviously a half season behind the Red Bull,” he said in a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone in session. “But we did reach the point in Hockenheim of being able to race with a working system, which gave us performance and was reliable. We have been behind the curve and there’s more to come relative to those competitors. We’ll find more performance all the time so we’re going to keep pushing on. It’s a new platform on which to find performance.

“It is complex and there are all sorts of different aspects to it, whether aerodynamics, exploiting the engine, details around the exhaust, and thermal management. You’ve also got the vehicle dynamics aspects like how it affects the balance of the car through corners. We’re working with all of those areas and there are a lot of fronts on which to work. We expect to be getting more from it in due course. We had a step in Germany and we hope to take a better step in Hungary.

“Clearly the Red Bull and Ferrari were quicker in Hockenheim and we hope to close a bit of that gap, if not all of it.”