McLaren: More to come from diffuser

McLaren believes it has only just begun to scrape the surface when it comes to exploiting the full potential of its blown diffuser

The Woking-based team is racing its revised floor for the first time at this weekend's German Grand Prix, although the new concept could not help Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button challenge Red Bull Racing for pole position.

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh reckons McLaren is nowhere near optimising the performance it can get out of its blown diffuser - and that the team should be able to get much more speed out of it over the next few races.

"I think we have probably got less than half of what is possible and I am sure that as the races go by we will get more from that," said Whitmarsh at Hockenheim.

"Once you have got this concept working then the aerodynamicists can start to work on the details of the floor, start to work on the exhausts, and start to work on how it interacts with the wheels and the tyres. There is a lot of scope now to make progress."

Whitmarsh has echoed comments from other teams that the blown diffuser is not the key element that will help McLaren beat Red Bull to the title - as he targets other areas of car developments too.

"We spotted some other things on their car [Red Bull] that we are looking at the moment," explained Whitmarsh. "They have worked on developing the blown diffuser but we mustn't get carried away with the idea that the blown diffuser is the answer to everything.

"I think once you are exploiting exhaust gases in that way then you can start to develop the car. They have other features on their car which are interesting too. We will be looking at them and we will be looking to see what we can do."

Whitmarsh reckoned his team needed to find a lap performance improvement of up to 0.25 seconds per race if it was to triumph in 2010.

"We know that we have to continue to try and develop the car by 0.125s to 0.25s per lap at every race," he said. "That is a second every four races.

"We need to be doing that. This championship is still very winnable and we will be focused and pushing hard on that inevitably as the weeks go by. Then we will start to concentrate a little bit more on next year's car but I think we will get that balance right."