Formula One news

McLaren comfortable after first day in Malaysia

The Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team completed today's two 90-minute test sessions without any major problems. Lewis Hamilton faced a small gearshift problem in the morning but both the Briton and his team mate Kovalainen were positive about the completed programme.

McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh looked back at today's work saying: "With these back to back races at the start of the season, it is often difficult to keep up the momentum of our relentless development pace; consequently both drivers were evaluating several new parts, on top of the set up and tyre evaluation work that is customary during the Friday sessions. Despite the small gearshift problem on Lewis's car this morning we are pretty comfortable with the performance of the MP4-23 here. Obviously there is always room to improve and the engineers will be working hard this evening to find those extra tenths, but overall we are reasonably happy."

Lewis Hamilton commented on the job today: "I am pretty happy with today's results as the car showed consistent pace throughout the session and good overall speed. Unfortunately the morning session was not perfect as I had a slight problem on the car right at the end, but this didn't really have any effect on our planned programme of tyre evaluation and race set up work."

Heikki Kovalainen said: "That was a good, steady start to the weekend. The car feels pretty comfortable to drive round here, and we made good progress on the set up for the weekend. The track surface had only recently been relayed, and as a result it was constantly evolving throughout the two sessions. The conditions here are always very extreme with the heat and humidity, but this had no effect on the cars performance and I am pretty happy so far with how everything has gone."

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