McLaren set up two novel benchmarks at November 4’s Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, however that came as small relief to the record-hitting outfit.
Following the fruitful race weekend, Lewis Hamilton had a fuel pressure trouble on the twentieth lap, which put him out the race and it was left to his associate Jenson Button to guarantee points for his group with a fourth-positioned conclusion.
Before Lewis’s race came to a hasty end, he had set a novel landmark by taking McLaren’s aggregated distance spent in the lead of Grands Prix past the 50,000-kilometer mark.
And, secondly, in racking up 12 world championship points for Button’s fourth position, McLaren set a new record of 56 points-scoring races on the trot, eclipsing Ferrari’s previous mark.
Team head Martin Whitmarsh stated, “Neither of these statistics offer much relieve for any person at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, but they surely both bear witness to a really striking work of art of on-track McLaren triumph in Formula One, dating back all the way to 1966.
“I expect we can win back to the front [in the remaining races in the US and Brazil] as I’d love to take a win or two more before the end of the period,” Whitmarsh added.
Hamilton’s departure entailed McLaren dropped additional points to Ferrari in the race for second position in the constructors’ contest behind Red Bull.
2008 world champ Hamilton was left irritated by his vehicle’s failure on November 04.
“I’m grief-stricken – I’d had actually good speed all weekend and I feel certain we could have succeeded,” he said.