Having already won a race with a KERS-powered challenger, McLaren and Ferrari are quite excited ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, as both teams have decided to keep developing the unit throughout the 2009 season. Looking ahead, McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh argued that the technology will be one of MP4-24's biggest assets at Monza, as the team aims for their second win of the season.
“Monza is notable for being a power circuit, and, with KERS, we should see some incredible speeds – particularly during qualifying when the drivers will double-deploy KERS along the start/finish straight,” argued Whitmarsh in a press preview for the Monza race.
Having scored more points than any other Formula One outfit throughout the last 4 races, McLaren are quite entitled to hope for a race win on September 13th. On the other hand, rivals BMW have decided not to further develop the technology this year, and will have a hard time building on their impressive result at Spa.
Although both Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica ended the Belgian Grand Prix inside the Top 5 – for the first time this season – the former reckoned it will be a tough job keeping the momentum in the championship without the power-enhancing KERS unit.
“The speed we had at Spa-Francorchamps with lower downforce gives us hope that we could do even better at Monza with even less downforce. However, the cars equipped with KERS will probably have a considerable advantage over the long straights of this high-speed circuit,” admitted Heidfeld, who finished the race at Spa in 5th place.
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