Formula One news

Whitmarsh: Ferrari within our grasp

McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh was encouraged by McLaren's performance at the season-opener in Melbourne and happy that the team's double podium finish has established a solid basis for a "championship assault". Whitmarsh says the team is now focused on closing the performance gap on Ferrari.

"By comparison to most we came away from Australia with a more positive feeling and we know we will be improving the car race on race," Whitmarsh said.

"Clearly at the moment we are primarily focused on closing the gap to Ferrari, who have done a good job over the winter, but they are within our grasp."

Whitmarsh also claims that the team made good progress at the recent test in Malaysia. The team hardly set the timesheets alight but the main objective of the test was to improve the performance of the car over longer stints having witnessed the dominant race pace of Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari.

"The areas that we have been looking at have been long run protection of performance as well as general performance uplift," Whitmarsh continued.

"We have had a lot of interesting new components on the car and it was a productive test.

"But all the other teams are also working hard and improving. During a test, everyone runs with different fuel loads so you can't read anything from the final times, but next Saturday in Malaysia we will know whether we've been able to improve at a faster rate than our competitors," he added.

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