McLaren hopes worst part is now behind

The Woking-based team has failed to score a single point since the Bahrain Grand Prix, a feat matched only by Force India, with it becoming abundantly clear about how poor the MP4-24 is on high-speed venues.

However, despite the slump in its fortunes, McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh thinks better times lie ahead - as he singles out next month's Hungarian Grand Prix as the place where he hopes it can shine

When asked by AUTOSPORT if he believed the worst was now behind the team, Whitmarsh said: "I very much hope so! So, I think we had a situation at Silverstone where if you are killed in high speed corners, you not only lose time there but also down the straights thereafter.

"Barcelona was a toughy as well. Some of the other circuits are slightly more to our liking, and I think a big regret we have this year is Monaco. I think we were truly competitive there and that didn't quite work out, but we will carry on. We have to develop our car and Hungary is a more hopeful looking prospect than here or some of the other circuits."

Although the results have not come McLaren's way in recent races, Whitmarsh thinks progress has actually been made in understanding what went wrong with the design this year.

"I think we have some understanding," he said. "This weekend we took KERS off the car, and we took it off because of the weight distribution issues. That was an interesting experiment, and we really threw it at our drivers.

"Heikki had a very different car to what he had been driving all year, handed to him on Saturday morning, and he had to deal with that. He did an excellent job, a very limited experience of that very different configuration, and in the circumstances did a good job in qualifying. So in a positive way we have actually learned quite a bit. Now we have to implement some of those lessons and make the car quicker."

Whitmarsh believes that the time may also have come for McLaren to start changing the approach it has to improving its car - and perhaps shaking off what has perhaps been over-analysis of the situation.

"We were disastrously behind in week 11. We really threw everything we could at it, and I have to take a lot of responsibility for this. Like a race team we got stuck in in those early races, and we threw everything at progressing.

"But when you fight in that day-by-day, hour-by-hour situation you don't always pull back enough and say okay we will accept the pain of uncompetitiveness and take some bigger incremental steps. I think we had a great feeling of race-by-race improvement in the first few races, and that came to a shuddering disappointment in Barcelona.

"I think we then focused on Monaco because it was a particularly special circuit for us. We put a lot of effort into that, which didn't help us at a place like Silverstone, but we have a large new package coming through which we have to get through as quickly as we can.

"There is always the danger that every time that I go to the wind tunnel or anywhere in the company, I ask what that is and what's it worth? Then I say, right I will have it now.

"They say they are in the middle of developing it and you say you want it next weekend. When you do that you expend a lot of resource and energy. It is a blend and you have to get that balance right. You have to have a racing mentality to be in this business, and the organisation feels it, but you have to balance that.

"I don't think we have necessarily got that right and I think we have spent too much time probably being overly analytical and not enough time being straightforward pragmatic - what is it?

"Don't know how it works, but it's on another car, let's take it and put it on ours! That is a good old fashioned approach to it, we need a bit of that and we are applying a bit of that right now."