McLaren optimistic over blown diffuser

The Woking-based team tried out its blown diffuser for the first time at Silverstone last weekend, but it was removed from the car on Friday night after the outfit struggled to find a good balance with it - and suffered from issues relating to the heat.

Work is now underway for another trial of the concept in practice at Hockenheim in a fortnight's time, and Whitmarsh hopes that the improvements will be good enough for it to remain on the car for the whole weekend.

"I'm quite optimistic now," he said. "Because of circumstance we took the blown diffuser off on Friday, and we got a free back-to-back because on Saturday we didn't have it.

"I was looking at the data and I think we now have some understanding of the issues, if not all, and we can devise some experiments. Hopefully we can make some progress on Friday in Hockenheim and then use it."

Whitmarsh admitted that it had been a bigger than expected task to get the blown diffuser on the car for the high-speed Silverstone circuit, but he thought the team had made the right decision with what it did.

"I think it was a big challenge," he said. "That could have been a mistake, but I'm glad we did it and I'm glad we took it off. I didn't feel like it on Friday night but now we have got a lot of good data."

He added: "Lewis will still say that he thought we should have raced it and, from the data, I think he's not wrong. Ultimately it was my decision and I think it was the right one.

"We were in a little bit of disarray on Friday, with a new circuit, gusty conditions and drivers uncomfortable. As a race team you take a decision like that, and to say: 'right, we are to concentrate on something different on each car', that would have confused us as well.

"I don't think we'd have had a much better result this weekend. We've got some good ideas now that will hopefully take us forward on Friday in Germany."