McLaren on Wednesday debuted a new bodywork package that it hopes will draw the MP4-22 alongside the pace of its championship challenger Ferrari.
The Woking based outfit is five points clear of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship, and level-pegging in the drivers’ standings, but team officials confessed after Bahrain that the Maranello built F2007 is nonetheless slightly quicker.
“The updated package is not aesthetically very different,” F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh is quoted as saying by the Spanish newspaper Diario As, “but we hope to bring a winning car to Barcelona.”
Press reports and photographs from the straight-line test at a private airfield in Menorca on Wednesday indicate that McLaren’s chrome-liveried car has indeed been slightly tweaked; with detailed changes mainly to the rear wing, sidepod chimneys and barge boards.
Test and DTM driver Gary Paffett performed the driving duties on the 1.8km grass-lined airfield runway, and will complete the aerodynamic test on Thursday.
