Nice 

Impressive performance by McLaren.
Especially that Lewis kid.

L.Hamilton

GP Starts: 7
GP Wins: 2
GP Poles: 2
GP Podiums:6
Total Points:48

The team had set themselves a clear and a hard goal for the team to conquer, that goal was simple, to get ahead of Ferrari, the team wanted a 0.15 improvement every grand prix, which would be a hard thing to do, since there are many back to back races, the McLaren team would have their work cut out, the McLaren team have exceeded their goal, and are making a 0.2 second improvement, every race.

At the start of the 2007 season, the McLaren team were around 0.5 to a second a lap slower than the dominant Ferrari's, this changed, as McLaren turned the disadvantage on its head, and got their first win of the 2007 season at Malaysia.

In Bahrian, the Ferrari's appeared to have the edge on the softer of the tyres, leaving Felipe Massa to win the Grand Prix.

The turning point in the seven races that have passed was almost certainly Ferrari's new Europe car, which debuted at the Spanish Grand Prix. Reliability problems stopped Kimi Raikonen's race winning chances in their tracks, as Felipe Massa won infront of Lewis Hamilton, things were about to change for both McLaren and Ferrari.

The Monaco Grand Prix was nothing short of dominated by Fernando Alonso and McLaren, with Lewis Hamilton in close persuit, Ferrari were no where to be seen, leaving McLaren a healthy lead in both championships.

Canada was set to be Ferrari's race, this was not the case, both Ferrari's struggling to beat the faster McLaren's. Felipe Massa was disqualified, and Kimi finished a dissapointed 5th, with McLaren superstar, Lewis Hamilton winning the incident packed race.

Just seven days later, the same result was repeated, many people betted against McLaren, and thought Ferrari would be faster, this was not the case, Ferrari were 0.3-0.5 seconds behind the faster McLaren's and McLaren CEO Martin Witmarsh intends to keep Ferrari behind, as the McLaren team are already preparing upgrades to the ultra quick MP4-22.

"This year more than ever, it's all about a broad number of very minor changes," Whitmarsh said. "We're really on a very micro-level managing airflow around the car. And we've got a great team of young engineers with the bit between their teeth, charging along.

"But they're not complacent because Ferrari is a good competition and want to win this championship too and they will keep the pressure on us.

"We've got high confidence in the engineering processes - we see improvements straight away on the stopwatch. We've got a reasonably good step forward in the pipeline for France and, looking at the development system, we've got some more things coming through."

"Aerodynamics are still the determining factor," Whitmarsh added. "We started out at the beginning of the year with a target of 0.15 seconds per race improvement and we increased that to 0.2 seconds per race. Now we're doing better than that."

With the back-to-back North American races behind them, the Formula One teams return to testing this week in preparation for the forthcoming French Grand Prix. The majority will be in action at the UK's Silverstone circuit, where a three-day session kicks off on Tuesday.

Any fans hoping to get a glimpse of man-of-the-moment Lewis Hamilton will be disappointed, as McLaren have opted to give him some time off ahead of his Goodwood Festival of Speed appearance next weekend. Instead, test driver Pedro de la Rosa will partner Fernando Alonso for the championship leaders' programme.

It it understandable that Alonso is not happy with it. A double world champ beaten by a rookie teammate. Aint a nice thing. Pressure is on him not Lewis.

Ron set his sight on young Lewis and I guess Ron has made the right decision. Looking at the performance of both drivers and its cars, the other teams have to burn midnight oil to keep up.

Those glory days of McLaren are back. However, I still miss Mika.

He's in DTM lor, driving the AMG Mercedes, alongside another McLaren protoge Garry Paffet

DTM = Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters or Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft  (prior to 1996). It was never a Mercedes or Daimler only as it also has Audi and before that OPEL

any1 got the schematic designs for hamilton's helmet? want to make a template for it to fit my dull shoei fullface helmet...

Ralf Schumacher was the quickest man on Tuesday, as testing got underway at Silverstone. Schumacher clocked a best lap of 1m 22.540s around the British circuit to put Toyota top of the timesheets. The German was just over one-tenth of a second quicker than McLaren's Pedro de la Rosa.

Schumacher spent most of his day's running concentrating on set-up work for July's British Grand Prix but he also carried out several qualifying simulations, during which he scored his fastest time. With the forecast rain never materialising, the German was able to complete 71 laps.

"In general it was a successful day and we made it through everything that we had planned," explained Schumacher. "The conditions were very good, particularly in the morning, although the wind picked up in the afternoon. We had one stoppage after lunch while we changed some suspension settings but overall things went well."

De la Rosa, meanwhile, kicked off an intensive engineering programme for McLaren. The Spanish tester focused on evaluating new developments and also took time to work on set-up for the forthcoming British race. He will drive again on Wednesday, before Fernando Alonso takes over for the final day on Thursday.

Over four-tenths down on the McLaren was the Red Bull of Mark Webber. Although Red Bull had planned to carry out a complete evaluation of a new aero update ahead of next week's French Grand Prix, Webber only managed to complete 42 laps after a hydraulic actuator problem on his RB3 caused a delay.

Fourth-quickest driver was Renault's Heikki Kovalainen, who completed 63 laps in the R27. Kovalainen initially focused on car set-up before comparing tyre types and aerodynamic setting for the British race. The Finn will share the French team's sole chassis on Wednesday with tester Nelson Piquet Jr.

Veteran test driver Luca Badoer took up the fifth-fastest slot for Ferrari. Badoer covered 57 laps, as he evaluated new components. Nick Heidfeld's best time in the BMW Sauber was just under two-tenths down on the Italian's time. Heidfeld tested tyres and some new mechanical components, but was forced to finish an hour early after being troubled by a slight pain in his back. The German will be replaced by team tester Timo Glock on Wednesday.

Though Toro Rosso's Vitantonio Liuzzi ended the day in seventh, he was only able to begin testing at midday after being held up by a delayed flight from Indianapolis. Liuzzi's programme focused the team's new quick-shift gearbox, but the Italian also fitted in some longer runs on race fuel loads.

Completing the line-up was Williams test driver Kazuki Nakajima, eighth, and the two Spyker testers, Adrian Valles and Giedo van der Garde, who finished in ninth and tenth respectively. The Spyker team used the new F8-VII/04 chassis for the first time during the test, with Valles and van der Garde completing 64 laps between them.

Testing continues at Silverstone on Wednesday.

Unofficial Tuesday times from Silverstone:
1. Ralf Schumacher, Toyota, 1:22.794
2. Pedro de la Rosa, McLaren, 1:22.915
3. Mark Webber, Red Bull, 1:23.329
4. Heikki Kovalainen, Renault, 1:23.510
5. Luca Badoer, Ferrari, 1:23.770
6. Nick Heidfeld, BMW Sauber, 1:23.841
7. Vitantonio Liuzzi, Toro Rosso, 1:24.125
8. Kazuki Nakajima, Williams, 1:24.665
9. Adrian Valles, Spyker, 1:25.394
10. Giedo van der Garde, Spyker, 1:25.931

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