McLaren preview the German GP

McLaren pair Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button are not expecting anything special in Germany this weekend.

Fernando Alonso: “Hockenheim is quite a technical circuit which requires fairly high downforce, and although most of the corners are relatively low-speed, they come after long, power-hungry straights, so the set-up of both the power unit and chassis for both eventualities can be quite tricky. For this kind of circuit, you need a car with which you can push, and I feel we’re making improvements in that area. For sure it will be different to Hungary – we can’t expect to be the number four team there, and our midfield rivals will be stronger, but we’ll try to maximise everything we have in our armoury and give it our best shot. The whole team has worked incredibly hard over the first half of the year, so it’ll be great to be able to have some luck and bring both cars home without any major issues.”

Jenson Button: “Although Hockenheim has had two different configurations over the years, there’s a lot of history there and the fans love their racing. Our car is strong under heavy braking, but despite the long, sweeping corners and fast straights, this isn’t as much of a necessity there as in Hungary. We’re expecting it to be a tricky weekend as the best-placed cars are the ones with the highest straight-line speeds, but we’ll see what we can do. The MP4-31 is well balanced and has good traction out of the corners, so we might be able to make up some time around a lap. There are a couple of decent overtaking opportunities there, so you don’t just need to rely on DRS and a good slipstream on the straights, and it’s an enjoyable challenge. The asphalt is smooth which will hopefully rubber in nicely over the course of the weekend, as you need good grip to have any chance of making up ground. I remember the craziness of the old configuration – huge straights and fiddly chicanes, which made set-up a tricky compromise – and this layout is very different, but you can see they’ve designed it to promote close racing.”