McLaren preview the Malaysian Grand Prix

Tuesday, 24 March 2015 at 18:21

McLaren preview the Australian Grand Prix weekend, Round 2 of the 2015 Formula 1 world championship, at Sepang.

Jenson Button: “Melbourne was certainly a challenging weekend for us, but there were positives to take from it. A lot of our performance was largely unknown coming into the weekend given the limited running we had over winter testing. Despite our finishing position, getting to the chequered flag has meant that we’re now armed with much more data about our package and we can learn a huge amount from it.”

Fernando Alonso: “I watched the weekend in Australia very closely and I was in touch with the team from the moment they arrived. It’s clear we have a lot of work ahead of us but Jenson’s result in Melbourne was encouraging from the point of view of reliability and data collection, which are extremely important.”

Circuit lowdown

The Sepang International Circuit was the first Formula One track to be designed exclusively by Hermann Tilke. It was opened in March 1999, since when it’s been a permanent fixture on the F1 calendar as the venue for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
The combination of high-g corners and extreme cockpit temperatures make this one of the most demanding races of the year for the drivers. The circuit is also an interesting technical challenge for the engineers, who need to maximise the trade-off between aerodynamic grip through the track’s fast corners and straight-line speed.
As was the case last year, Pirelli are taking their two hardest tyre compounds to the race. Even with the medium and hard tyre compounds, teams are expecting a minimum of two pitstops during the 56-lap race.