McLaren-Mercedes has encountered a rash of teething troubles with its MP4-19 and test session times indicate that the car’s pre-season development is lagging behind, a report claims.
McLaren-Mercedes has encountered a rash of teething troubles with its MP4-19 and test session times indicate that the car’s pre-season development is lagging behind, a report claims.
The McLaren MP4-19 set laps near the bottom of the time sheets at Barcelona last week. Previously, in private testing at Valencia, the car had set lap records but alongside rivals at the Circuit de Catalunya it appeared off the pace.
McLaren’s relatively mediocre speed could be attributed to the team focusing its efforts on evaluating race setups under heavy fuel loads, but Kimi Raikkonen recently admitted that the Woking-based squad had encountered a few problems.
“In testing at Jerez and Valencia the MP4-19 went really well, but at Barcelona we started having problems,” Raikkonen said, according to the . “There haven’t been many positive days of testing, so that’s why I’m still not sure how good our new car really is.”
“Our problems have been with setup. For most of them we already have a solution, we just need to sort them all out in the remaining test sessions. Our troubles are mostly in connection with the integration of the car with the new engine.”
David Coulthard and drivers Alex Wurz and Pedro de la Rosa also experienced engine gremlins with the MP4-19. However, Raikkonen added: “I think that the reliability of the new Mercedes engines won’t be a problem at all. Especially when the new evolution comes, things will be fine,” he said.