Montreal is ''is not the easiest to forecast''The McLaren Mercedes team's CEO Formula 1, Martin Whitmarsh, looks back at Lewis Hamilton's great victory at Monaco despite a slowly deflating tyre, and at Heikki Kovalainen's missed opportunity when an unfortunate electronics
glitch cost him a chance at taking his maiden F1 victory.
As the Canadian Grand Prix moves closer, Whitmarsh also shares his evaluation of the demanding and unpredictable characteristics of the Gilles
Jacques Villeneuve circuit.
Coming out of Monaco, what is the mood within the team?
"Overall the McLaren Mercedes team comes out of Monaco a third of the way through the season leading the Drivers’ Championship and second in the Constructors’ title. Consequentially, particularly on the back of a fabulous win in Monaco, the mood is very good. The feeling is that there is good development momentum in the team and that we have an exciting season ahead of us. Inevitably Lewis comes out of Monaco in a very positive frame of mind and firmly believing that he can build upon that success and have a strong Championship fight.
Heikki of course has performed quite brilliantly in his first six races with the team and therefore has to come out of it with some disappointment. Whilst there is underlying satisfaction with his personal performance, Heikki has suffered some misfortune, which has taken from him the opportunity to win his first Grand Prix.
But he is an extremely positive guy who realises that he has a great career ahead of him and there is no doubt that he is going to enjoy many Grand Prix victories during the course of his career."
The next stop is Montreal, where track characteristics are completely opposite to the narrow streets of Monaco.
"We have a car which excels in high speed corners and there aren’t too many of those in Canada, however, we have a reasonably good track record at this event. It is about high speed down the straights, braking stability, durability of the braking system, traction out of the corners, which are relatively short but with high speeds into them. All this means it is an unusual circuit that is not the easiest to forecast, but we have every reason to believe we have made improvements on the car and the whole team is looking forward to carrying our championship campaign forward."
This is traditionally a tough race for brakes, what measure does the team take towards maintaining performance throughout the race and the weekend?
"Inevitably all of the teams have to review their braking systems prior to the Canadian round of the Championship as it would be extremely unusual if the more standard brakes used at conventional circuits would last the Canadian Grand Prix. There have been many occasions in the past where quite simply the brakes have worn out before the end and that is something that we all have to work very hard at. As the hardest circuit on brakes in terms of wear, the team and Akebono, with areas such as friction materials and cooling systems, work to have a special Canadian Grand Prix set-up."
McLaren Mercedes
