I asked Tim Goss, one of the two McLaren designers, how he envisaged the KERS button being used on a qualifying lap and he confirmed that it can be used for bursts of a second or less, it doesn’t have to be used for maximum seven seconds all at once. I can imagine Ayrton Senna would have made amazing use of this, finding exactly the right places to give his car a little surge of power and it’s there for this generation of drivers to develop that art.
Without doubt one of the key areas will be getting the timing right when hitting the boost button exiting a corner onto a long straight, for example out of the final corner in Malaysia. But with no traction control it will be quite easy to spin the car if you hit the button too soon; think of all the drivers who spin coming out of the first chicane at Monza…
And there is not much time for the drivers to get used to these new cars and controls; Hamilton revealed that he will have just seven days in the car before Melbourne and no testing days after that until the season’s finished. So the simulators at the factory will take on even more importance and that is what makes McLaren feel extra confident as they are well ahead of the rest of the field when it comes to the sophistication of the simulator.
Hamilton and Kovalainen can sit in the simulator at McLaren and fine tune their KERS button responses, their use of the front wing control and so on, which is some way ahead, as far as I’m aware, of what the others can do. Ron Dennis suggested that Hamilton is already onto this and is very much focussed on the areas, ‘where he can make the difference.’
Kovalainen revealed that he will not allow himself to get so stressed out this season. He let the pressure get to him sometimes last year and worried too much, which hurt his performances. This year he feels he knows the team better and has more of a handle on where he fits in. The key thing for him is that Martin Whitmarsh the new team principal is a big Heikki fan and that will keep him in place unless he woefully underperforms. I think he’ll be much stronger this year.
McLaren was finishing its fifth and final 2009 chassis when we were there, which is pretty impressive. Interestingly the one they put in for the crash test, is going to be used for testing and racing. It will be in Portugal next week, despite having been smashed into from all angles by the FIA’s crash test devices! I always thought you just chucked the crash test tub in the bin, but apparently not.
Another little nugget which came out was that McLaren has no contractual right to propose drivers to Force India. They can give some thoughts but there’s not even an obligation for Force India to test any McLaren drivers.
allenonf1.wordpress.com 
good atricle, i think that they might use levers for front wing adjustment behind the steering wheel too, mclaren for instance has 6 levers atm, 2 for engine maps, 2 for gears and 2 for clutch. they could use clutch levers for adjustment of front wing, as you need clutch only when starting…
btw. i think they had number 1 on their car in 2007, as alonso was a champ in 2006 so he had number 1 at mclaren. they also had number 1 in 2000, with mika as 1999 champ. had to say it 😛
JA writes: Good point, number two, Alonso’s McLaren was number one, as you say. Thanks for that. J
Be interesting to read who you think are the drivers who will benefit from, or respond best to, the new demands from the 2009 cars that you allude to in the opening bit of this posting, James?
[…] More from behind the scenes at McLaren – McLaren was finishing its fifth and final 2009 chassis when we were there, which is pretty impressive. Interestingly the one they put in for the crash test, is going to be used for testing and racing. It will be in Portugal next week, despite having been smashed into from all angles by the FIA’s crash test devices! I always thought you just chucked the crash test tub in the bin, but apparently not. […]
KERS will be an interesting addition but I really hope that the ones of us sat at home may have an indication as to how much ‘boost’ has been used/is still available etc.
I’m sure it will add to the excitement to know that as we enter the last few laps of a race that the guy in front is out of boost but the guy behind has three seconds available and is closing the gap rapidly.
Just a thought…