Niki Lauda has tipped McLaren to mount a serious challenge to Red Bull’s dominance in 2012.<\/p>\n
His prediction immediately followed a Red Bull one-two in Brazil, with Mark Webber winning and Sebastian Vettel – despite a nearly race-long gearbox problem – nonetheless able to beat McLaren’s Jenson Button to second place.<\/p>\n
“I think we can be satisfied,” said the team’s Dr Helmut Marko, “because we have already been using some of the parts that we will use in 2012.”<\/p>\n
Triple world champion Lauda, however, warned Red Bull to expect a closer fight from McLaren in 2012.<\/p>\n
“McLaren started this season really badly, but afterwards was the only team that could catch Red Bull,” he told German broadcaster RTL.<\/p>\n
“Next year they will be Red Bull’s biggest opponent, if they start with a good car from the beginning.<\/p>\n
“If they start at the same level, then it becomes a developing struggle between them and that’s where McLaren has the lead, technically,” added Lauda.<\/p>\n
Despite Webber’s win in Brazil, it is Button who completed the season as championship runner-up to Vettel.<\/p>\n
“He beat Lewis this year and was very consistent,” said Lauda, “while Lewis was up and down with his personal problems.<\/p>\n
“Jenson drives with a smooth line while Lewis is like a maniac,” added the great Austrian, “so I think it is Jenson who will be significantly involved in the behaviour of the new car.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Niki Lauda has tipped McLaren to mount a serious challenge to Red Bull’s dominance in 2012. His prediction immediately followed a Red Bull one-two in Brazil, with Mark Webber winning and Sebastian Vettel – despite a nearly race-long gearbox problem – nonetheless able to beat McLaren’s Jenson Button to second place. “I think we can …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,153,154,165,5284,598,129,164],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14431,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14430\/revisions\/14431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}