Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button must beat Mark Webber in Korea on Sunday to have any chance of winning the title, says McLaren engineer Phil Prew.
Red Bull driver Webber has a 14-point lead over team-mate Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso with only three races left.
Hamilton is 28 points adrift with Button 31 points behind Webber.
And Prew told BBC Sport: "We need to be in front of Webber. Both our drivers need to attack."
Every team is entering into the unknown to some extent this weekend in Yeongam on a brand new track being used for a grand prix race for the first time.
Speaking from Korea during a McLaren phone conference, principal race engineer Prew said there are parts of the track which should favour all the leading teams.
"I actually walked the circuit this morning with the other engineers and I was fairly impressed with what I saw," he added. "The track itself, the kerbs and the run-off all looked pretty good.
"To be honest, it's a very good combination of quite a few different sorts of circuit. It has some long straights with big stops, which is not dissimilar to Canada, which I think will favour our car.
"Sector two is a bit more like Turkey, where we performed quite well. And then the last sector, which would typically be a very high-downforce sector, a bit more like Hungary perhaps."
Button finished fourth at the last race in Suzuka, while Hamilton finished fifth, having failed to finish three of the previous four grands prix. Prew says everyone is keen to put the recent setbacks behind them.
"We've under-delivered points in the last couple of races, which is a frustration to the drivers and the team.
"But they know that the car has the pace and the potential to be competing, and finishing higher up that we've achieved recently.
"They both want to win races and they both want to win the championship and to do that they have to be winning."
Both McLaren cars will be running modified front and rear wings in Korea as well as other mechanical updates they hope will get them closer to the Red Bulls.
With the world championship winning drivers from the last two seasons in their cars [Button in 2009, Hamilton in 2008] Prew says the whole team can draw on their experience, as well as the failure to win the title in 2007.
"Personally I was in the position in 2007 when we gave away an awful lot of points in two races, effectively 42 points with Lewis to lose the championship in 2007 [equivalent to the 2010 points system].
"So defending a lead [as Red Bull have to this season] can give you added pressure, it possibly leads you to change your approach slightly.
"But for McLaren at the moment it's a very clear objective - we've got to be winning races, we've got to have strong performances from both drivers and then we'll see how it pans out over the next three races."
0 comments:
Post a Comment