{"id":17854,"date":"2013-02-22T07:10:48","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T12:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=17854"},"modified":"2013-02-22T07:10:48","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T12:10:48","slug":"mclaren-struggling-with-2013-car-button","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/mclaren-struggling-with-2013-car-button\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren struggling with 2013 car – Button"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jenson Button has admitted McLaren is grappling with its new car for 2013.<\/p>\n

\"Jenson-Button\"Unlike most other main rivals, notably Red Bull and Ferrari, McLaren – whose British driver Button won the 2012 finale in Brazil – did not simply ‘evolve’ last year’s car for the new season.<\/p>\n

Red Bull’s outspoken Dr Helmut Marko said this week he didn’t understand why McLaren changed so much between 2013 and 2013.<\/p>\n

Mark Webber agrees: “This sport is hard enough – and the cars difficult enough to understand technically – without taking risks unnecessarily.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, things are going well in the Red Bull camp.<\/p>\n

“I’m very happy with the car, with the balance, how it feels,” Germany’s SID news agency quotes world champion Sebastian Vettel as saying.<\/p>\n

McLaren’s contrasting philosophy, however, was that development of the 2012 concept was almost exhausted, and so a new base was necessary.<\/p>\n

Button explained that, had the Woking team simply evolved the MP4-27, “I think after three or four races you would realise that you’re at the end of the development curve with it”.<\/p>\n

The problem right now, though, is that McLaren is struggling to “understand where the car is”.<\/p>\n

Button continued: “At times it feels good, at others it doesn’t.”<\/p>\n

There are whispers in the paddock that arguably the best-performing car at the present moment is the evolved Lotus.<\/p>\n

Romain Grosjean did a four-stop race simulation on Thursday, and team boss Eric Boullier beamed afterwards that – towards the end of the faux race – the E21 seemed to be showing potentially grand prix-winning pace.<\/p>\n

“It (Lotus’ pace) certainly was not bad,” Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg told Auto Motor und Sport.<\/p>\n

“But Lotus was also good here during winter testing last year.”<\/p>\n

McLaren’s Button thinks it’s too early to say if there’s a standout performer in 2013.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know,” he said.\u00a0 “All I know is that no one is massively standing out.”<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenson Button has admitted McLaren is grappling with its new car for 2013. Unlike most other main rivals, notably Red Bull and Ferrari, McLaren – whose British driver Button won the 2012 finale in Brazil – did not simply ‘evolve’ last year’s car for the new season. Red Bull’s outspoken Dr Helmut Marko said this …<\/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":[5262,5340,153,5284],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17854"}],"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=17854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17855,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17854\/revisions\/17855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}