McLaren unconcerned at crash test failure

The team admitted yesterday (Thursday) that its car had failed the test, and reports suggest that this could lead to the car being delayed until the Italian Grand Prix in September. But Whitmarsh said that the failure could actually help the development of the radical machine.

"Some people make an issue out of it but you'd probably find that almost 50 percent of those tests are failed," said McLaren MD Martin Whitmarsh. "Logically, if you pass the test you don't know how much you've passed it by and hence how much excess weight you have in the chassis, whereas if you fail it, you know for certain that you have to make the construction a little sturdier. You can therefore argue that factoring in a couple of failures will bring you closer to the optimum.

"To be honest, the crash-testing we've been doing on the circuit has been of more concern to us!" Whitmarsh laughed, in reference Kimi Raikkonen and Alex Wurz's recent testing crashes.

There have also been reliability issues with the car that, unless ironed out in post-French GP testing, could impact on the car's development due to the gentleman's agreement F1 August testing ban. "That is a bit of a pain," Whitmarsh admitted.