McLaren to Debut New Exhaust System at Silverstone

McLaren Mercedes will reportedly wait until their home race at Silverstone to bring their MP4-25 a major update for the championship. According to the team's engineering director Paddy Lowe, the Woking based team will debut the much-acclaimed Red Bull-type exhaust configuration on their cars at the British Grand Prix, while for the upcoming European Grand Prix in Valencia, the 2010 challenger will feature only some minor revisions.

“For the Valencia weekend we're not promising any massive steps in terms of car upgrades. Most of our efforts have just gone into making the best of this circuit. I know a number of other teams have brought particularly large updates. We're not one of those for this particular event,” said Lowe in a media conference previewing the Valencia race.

“But we will have a bigger package for Silverstone. It won't have escaped your notice that Red Bull have made an interesting use of exhaust exit flow. (...) That's something we're aiming to bring to the British Grand Prix and to try and make it work from the outset,” added the British engineer.

However, Lowe underlined that his team will previously test the new configuration during an aerodynamic session a few days prior to the Silverstone race, and only after decide upon using it in practice, for the first on-track test, and then during qualifying and race.

A head start in seeing how such a system would work will be provided by Ferrari, who have already tested their heavily updated car – new exhaust system included – last weekend and will debut it in Valencia. Lowe admitted his team will keep a close eye on Ferrari this weekend.

“It's a shame that some others have been slightly quicker than we were getting it, but we are where we are. I think we'll have to do what we can and see,” concluded Lowe.