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Bahrain Cancellation Gives McLaren More Time to Develop MP4-26

Lewis Hamilton admitted that the cancellation of the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix is actually good news for his team, in a sense that the Woking based squad will have more time to develop and improve the McLaren MP4-26 challenger.

Having debuted in testing a week later than its rivals, the MP4-26 has experienced several reliability issues in recent group tests which have hampered its mileage prior to the 2011 campaign. No sooner than yesterday, the 2008 F1 champion was telling the media that while others are already doing race simulations around the Barcelona track, McLaren is still focusing on solving its reliability problems.

We are trying to understand how the car, the tires and all the systems work together,” said Hamilton, referring to the stage in development experienced by McLaren these days, according to Finland's Turun Sanomat.

We are not yet in the position to do 140 laps a day, like Webber did,” he added. Not only the McLaren MP4-26 is not used to doing a lot of laps, but the car stopped short from impressing anyone in terms of lap times recently (despite the innovations it brings to the series this year).

Under the circumstances, having some extra two weeks to develop the car works just fine for the British team, as well as for Hamilton.

I am not too unhappy about the world championship only starting in Australia, because it gives us more time. We have some catching up to do and not a lot of time until the season starts,” he concluded.
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