Also, the Sepang circuit is much more technical, whereas the use of Kinetic Energy Recovery System will not play as important role as it did at Melbourne. The McLaren MP4-24 is still lacking plenty of performance this season, as Hamilton's pace during the practice sessions & qualifying in Australia was only good enough for mid-field.
“Frankly I think Malaysia will be very tough for this season. I think we will improve the car but I think it is a high-speed, technical circuit, we are lacking in downforce at the moment and therefore it is going to be tough,” argued Whitmarsh.
“We have an aggressive development strategy, we have to pick up the performance of the car. We will have new parts at all of the next races and we have to keep pushing until we are quick enough to reliably score points,” added the Englishman.
McLaren are also believed to change the design of their car's rear diffuser for the upcoming stages of this season. Although several teams have protested the designs used by Brawn, Toyota and Williams ahead of the Australian GP, Mercedes' motorsport boss Norbert Haug revealed McLaren should put their efforts to copying the double-decker design on the MP4-24 as soon as possible.
According to several technical analysis, the new design improves downforce by more than 20%, which is exactly what the MP4-24 needs in order to become a title contender this year.
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