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McLaren Launches MP4-28 In England

WOKING, England- Following the loss of Lewis
Hamilton at the end of last season, Team McLaren Mercedes launched their new
MP4-28 Thursday afternoon at their technology Centre headquarters.
Jenson Button, along with Hamilton’s new replacement,
Sergio Perez of Mexico, unveiled their new challenger, which resembles last
year’s car and retains the same high nose without a step. Noticeable also on
the car is a pull rod front suspension similar to the system employed by
Ferrari, who also used the device last season.

Button himself won three races and began well in Australia,
but reliability issues hit the team midway through the season, and considering
that Button won an all important victory at Spa after the summer break, the
Englishman did not accomplish another win until the final race of the season in
Brazil, but by then Button was long out of the fight for a championship. Perez
on the other hand, while at Sauber nearly beat Fernando Alonso in Malaysia and
finished second again Italy, but the Sauber team gave way to finishing the last
six races without a point.

But Button still is impressed about Perez, and he
feels that it will not take for the Mexican to improve with the new race car.

“The
positives definitely for me were in a very difficult race in Malaysia,”
Button said. “Obviously he had a fantastic result finishing second and so
close to the victory – I’m sure he still thinks about that moment right now –
but also in Monza; I wasn’t in the race at the end so I was able to watch Checo
( Perez’s nickname) come through the field and chase down Lewis at the end so
two really, really good races and races that he should be very proud of.

“But
then, obviously you had the other race in Suzuka with Lewis, which was a great
fight again but it obviously came off the other way. But that’s racing; you
have good races when you’re talented and of course you’re going to have bad
races, there’s always going to be a balance, but I think for the consistency
through the year was very good in terms of the results and the results that
should have come but didn’t as well. So there’s a lot more I’m sure we’ll see
from Checo in the next few years and improvements in working with McLaren – a
team that’s achieved so much – it really does bring the best out of you.”

Perez
meanwhile feels that he deserves to do better due to the fact that McLaren has
already put him through the simulator and should not have trouble getting used
to the car.

“For me it has been incredible, so
exciting.” He said. “I’ve never been so excited – even when I came in to
Formula One or anything else – it’s really something special that I’m looking
forward to the new season. It has been a very busy couple of months and we have
done an incredible job with my engineers working together in the simulator to
understand the car and I think if we can do the same in the next couple of days
of testing to prepare myself for the first race we’re going to have an
incredible preparation.”

Team manager Martin Whitmarsh has also made
it very clear that the team should improve this upcoming season on eliminating
mistakes and reliability issues, something that the team experienced a lot last
season and now has to clean it up.

“As people start to learn about this
car they will see that there are quite a lot of changes to the car, but it is
an evolution,” he said. “There’s been a tremendous effort on
processes of design and development and reliability and looking at our
processes of how we run the race team. It’s very clear nowadays, particularly
when you’ve got very stable regulations that it’s very unforgiving – if you
don’t score points then you quickly sit behind. Fernando [Alonso] and Ferrari maximized
the points out of product that they had [in 2012] and we didn’t. We’ve worked
very hard on that this year and we are intent of putting that right.”

“With all our competitors off the
radar screen there’s always a possibility that there has been a eureka moment
somewhere else, but it’s less likely,” he also added. “Under these
current regulations the cars are pretty well developed now and I think we are
quite pleased with where we are with this car today. Undoubtedly this car will
look different by the time we get to Barcelona and it will look different again
by the time we get to Australia as we continue to move forwards with it.”

If McLaren can gets things right in the
first race, then the real challenge will be to maintain that success, which
could give the team better chances to challenge Ferrari and the Red Bull teams
for both titles.

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