McLaren F1

The British Sports car maker, McLaren , has reached the last phase of the MP4-12C prototype, the road tests. The company will announce next month the performances of the missile, being the foreword the long-awaited market launch, scheduled for next year.
The guys from McLaren always called their prototypes with name of “experimental prototypes”, or briefly, XP. In promo video there are two vehicles, XP10 and XP8, fully “dressed” in mate black vinyl, unlike those before them, which were white and black.
According to the McLaren engineers, the testing sessions for the two prototypes began five weeks ago.
In the four minutes of the promo video, the two prototypes are tested on the roads of the Montblanc Massif, on the roads in Spain, but also on the racing tracks.

The two cars use an improved version of the supercharged McLaren M838T engine and a manual transmission, with optimized gear ratios. “The competitors’ vehicles we’ve tested become nervous
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Felipe Massa set the fastest time on the first day of testing at Valencia and surpassed Michael Schumacher by almost four tenths of a second.
Seven teams in Formula 1 have been started in the first test session this winter to properly prepare for the 2010 season of Formula 1.
In a beautiful, but relatively cold weather, Felipe Massa dominated most of the day, and eventually finished in the first position of the ranking after being clocked with 1:12.574 in the dying minutes of the session. In addition, the Brazilian was the most “hardworking” pilot on the circuit in Valencia, because he made no less than 102 laps.
The great surprise of the day came from the BMW Sauber Team after veteran driver Pedro de la Rosa finished second with 1:12.784.

As was anticipated, Michael Schumacher’s debut at Mercedes GP marked a special interest in the circuit, and the German has emerged on the track during
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Scuderia Ferrari forecasts a 2010 Formula 1 season dominated by their team, the Italians seeing in Fernando Alonso the driver that can be as good as Michael Schumacher. “Ferrari needs someone for the team similar to Schumi, ” said Stefano Domenicali, the Italian’s boss, to Auto Bild. “[Raikkonen is] very fast, but also very closed. In a car that is capable of winning, he was and is perfect – but if the car needs to be developed and the team fired up, Alonso is better,” Stefano Domenicali, the F1 team chief also added.
In another train of thoughts, the Scuderia officials hope that the 2007 Alonso-Hamilton episode (the two had a personal war, and the Formula 1 world title was then concurred by Kimi Raikkonen) will repeat inside the McLaren F1 Team, but to be mentioned that Alonso’s place in the equation will be taken by Button, the en-titre world champion.

McLaren Mercedes, Ferarri’s big rival, signed Jenson
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Sir Jackie Stewart affirms that the F1 world champion made a mistake when he left Brawn GP for McLaren.
One of the former Formula 1 glories, Sir Jackie Stewart, said that Jenson Button did a terrible mistake when he decided to leave Brown GP and join McLaren because he will find difficult to adapt to a new team that is accustomed to work with Hamilton.
“It will be difficult for him to take on Lewis Hamilton. It’s like walking into the lion’s den, because Lewis has had three years with McLaren now. He has it his way. He’s already disposed of one driver that came in there in Alonso. Fernando couldn’t cut it against Lewis Hamilton, and I think that Lewis will want to retain his position of prominence in that team. Whereas at Brawn, I think [Button] would have had an advantage over his [potential] team-mate Nico Rosberg, having knowledge of the team,” thinks Jackie
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The Formula 1 team will have, in 2010, a very delicate situation: on the starting line they will line up tow world champions, with big prides. Remember Senna and Prost?
Although Ross Brawn wanted Button to stay and race for his team, recently acquired by Mercedes, it seems that the new owner haven’t reached an agreement with the British driver, over the wage and bonuses for the 2010 season.
So, Jenson Button accepted, without having a second thought, the McLaren Team offer, where he will be teammate whit his las year fierce rival, Lewis Hamilton, last year’s champion. This is not a new thing for McLaren (the most notorious being the Senna-Prost team), but we will see if this is not going to affect the team spirit.

For the moment, rumor has it that Button’s ex-team will count on the services of Nico Rosberg and Nick Heidfeld, so the Mercedes team will be 100% German - unlike McLaren, where
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