After back-to-back race weekends, the Formula One community takes a four week break before Spain on May 13th. It's pretty amazing to have a three way points tie for first place. It will be interesting to see how the different teams adjust given the time off.
The next few weeks will see all the teams hard at work, testing and developing their cars and hoping to make big steps forward in performance."For all the teams, you would imagine that from this race to the next race is when you would expect the largest incremental improvement during the season," said McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh at the weekend."The car is still young and very much at the start of its development cycle. We've got a four-week break and the opportunity to test in Barcelona."Everyone who is doing their job will improve their car between now and then."McLaren lead Ferrari by five points in the constructors' standings and both teams can see substantial performance gains to be made before their next appearance at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Spain will be the home race for McLaren's Fernando Alonso. You can be sure his home crowd will provide robust support:
Ron Dennis: "Going to Spain we have every intention of making it a two horse race (between Alonso and Hamilton). "Spain will be Alonso's home race and the flowing and familiar Circuit de Catalunya is also far more to his liking than the hard braking characteristics of Bahrain. "This race (Bahrain) is so unique and it was complicated by wind and sand contamination, so it had all sorts of things making it difficult for the drivers," said Dennis."Don't read too much into this result), one way or another. I think the true level of competitiveness, team to team, will start to unfold over the next three or four races."
Thanks to
Reuters and
Yahoo for these quotes.