After beating arch rivals Ferrari but still finishing as Constructors’ runner-up over the past two years, McLaren strives to go one better by clinching another title in 2012. Who better to share the latest than test and reserve driver Gary Paffett, who spoke exclusively with GPUpdate.net from the team’s Woking factory.
Did you have a good Christmas?
Yes, yes it was a good Christmas. The season seems to be getting longer and longer as we don’t stop working until December now. The run up to Christmas is pretty short but the break between Christmas and the New Year is a good time to rest, recharge your batteries and get ready for the new season.
As a professional athlete with strict diets, is it difficult to avoid the obvious persuasions which surround us at Christmas time?
It kind of is, but you just have to be sensible. You’ve got to enjoy yourself and have a big roast dinner for Christmas Day and things like that, but I think it’s all about laying off all of the chocolates and the Christmas cake – those are the killers!
Here we are already in January – how are things looking at McLaren?
It’s always very difficult to say because we set ourselves targets to meet; but you can hit those targets and then get to the first test and be nowhere. So we are pretty happy with how things are going, the progress has been good and we have obviously had the car in the simulator in various stages for many months now; we’ve got a pretty good representation of what it is going to be like and it feels good.
So I think at the moment we are pretty happy, pretty positive and just waiting to get the car on-track to see where we are and where we can go forward. There is a lot of development still to be done but we are getting close to our first race package now, and then there are obviously the big updates for the European races - but it’s all going well, I would say.
Have you been spending much time with Jenson and Lewis?
No, not really. We see each other at the end of the year for awards ceremonies and things like that, where we can catch up and see each other quickly. But then we probably won’t see each under until the car launch, or in the simulator or a meeting in Woking. Usually after the season people tend to go their separate ways, often with their families, and I think everybody tries to forget about racing for a few weeks!
Since July 2011 McLaren has been in a technical partnership with Marussia Virgin. Does that involve things like driver feedback or is it solely a technical deal?
To be honest I don’t know very much about it at all, which probably means it’s not driver feedback (laughs)! There is certainly a technical partnership with Marussia, but none of the drivers are involved with the project, so that is just down to engineering support.
Looking back to the start of 2011, the final test in Barcelona was a very worrying time for McLaren and a full race distance wasn’t completed until Melbourne. Has the root cause of that situation now been pin-pointed?
We had an ambitious exhaust design that we were pushing very hard with. There were lots of ideas but that was the biggest source of downforce with the car, so we had a very ambitious idea.
Over the whole winter it seemed like a good idea and then, when we got to the point of testing it with everybody else, it didn’t work. I think it was just a case of the engineers being a little bit ambitious with a few things and we went back to something which we kind of knew, which turned out to be good and successful.
As you say, before the first race we hadn’t done anything near a race distance and I think, after Friday practice in Melbourne, we knew we were there or thereabouts pace-wise but were still very doubtful whether we would make it to the end of the race. The whole exhaust system was fairly new and, without running the system on a race distance for testing it, it was very difficult to know.
So I think it was just a case of our initial exhaust design idea being wrong and it didn’t quite work, but it just showed the resource in the team to be able to change things pretty much completely before the first race and actually come out with a result.
In recent years, there have been a number of occasions on which the new McLaren has been either slow or unreliable (or both!) at the first race. Are there measures in place to ensure a quick and reliable car immediately in 2012?
(Laughs) I wish we knew how to do that! Okay, certainly in 2009 and last year we started off with a car that wasn’t competitive, especially in testing. But I think the biggest things were that there were some really serious rule changes for those years, with completely different car design concepts.
Perhaps in 2009 we just got things a bit wrong…certainly many people got caught out with the double-diffusers, we weren’t the only ones. Last year was a different thing, the exhaust package, but once we sorted that out the actual car itself was competitive – the chassis and everything else. I think, with the rules staying very similar for this year, things will possibly and hopefully be a bit smoother from the word go!
Is winning the opening race a realistic goal?
Yes, absolutely. I don’t see why not. We had a competitive car for pretty much all of 2011. Red Bull definitely had the pace over us for the majority of the season but, all the way up to the end of the season, we were pushing them very hard. So our plan is certainly to go out there and challenge for a race win in Melbourne.
Series
Formula 1
Personalities
Gary Paffett
Teams
McLaren
Other
DTM Tickets (best price guarantee!) at Sportstadium.com
| Gary Paffett | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
| More Gary Paffett photos | |||
English
Nederlands
Español
Italiano
