Merc boss defends Lewis Hamilton

What is ailing McLaren Mercedes? In the five races so far, defending champion Lewis Hamilton has managed to score only 9 points and is 32 points behind the leader Jenson Button.

His compatriot Heikki Kovalainen has only 4 points in his kitty. Both the drivers failed to score a single point at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.

With the car struggling for pace, experts have already written off Hamilton’s chances of defending the title.

However, Norbert Haug, chief of Mercedes Benz motorsports, while admitting that the team needed to improve

dramatically, insisted they were working in the right direction to win races again. “Lewis is not the reigning world champion by accident,” Haug told DNA when asked to comment on whether the team had a realistic chance of competing for the championship after the disastrous Spanish GP.

In Barcelona on Sunday, Hamilton finished 9th, while Heikki Kovalainen had to retire from the race.

Speaking about the performance of the two drivers at the Spanish Grand Prix, Haug said that Kovalainen was suffering from a gearbox problem. “He started well and made up seven places, but then the gearbox let him down. He was in a position to score some points.” In case of Hamilton, after a big crash on lap one the 23-year-old was relegated to the back of the field. “More than 9th place was not possible afterwards,” Haug said.

Haug said that the performance had not been satisfactory as the cars were still lacking enough downforce. Stating that they were working hard to fix the problems, he said that the car had improved from what it was two months ago. “At the last test before the season started, we were 2.5 seconds a lap down, the deficit now was less than
a second.”

He admitted that the situation was still not good enough. “We are heading in the right direction and will need to improve further until we are winning again like we did the last two years when we won 40 percent of all Formula One races,” he said.

McLaren Mercedes hasn’t been impressive in qualifying sessions as well. Haug however refused to believe that their team had fallen short on adapting to the regulation changes for this season.