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F-duct advantage now neutralised - McLaren

Paddy Lowe says McLaren's competitors have caught up with development of the F-duct © Sutton Images

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McLaren believes its main competitors have now negated the early-season advantage it enjoyed running the F-duct.

McLaren pioneered the drag-reducing device at the start of the season and its main competitors have followed suit by developing their own versions. Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton still consistently set the fastest speed-trap times at grands prix, but the team's engineering director Paddy Lowe thinks Ferrari and Red Bull have now caught up.

"In terms of the F-duct, I think that's neutralised now among our main competitors," Lowe told the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Phone-In. "We saw that Ferrari and Red Bull were stronger in Germany and we shouldn't forget that they adopted the F-duct system, which was an advantage for us in the early part of the season."

He said the new fighting ground was over blown diffusers, but admitted McLaren was behind its competitors after introducing the concept later.

"As you know we're about a couple of races behind Ferrari with the introduction [of the blown diffuser] and a whole season, or half season, behind Red Bull," Lowe said. "But we did reach a point in Hockenheim of being able to race a working system which was giving us performance and was reliable, and we are able to deliver something extra with that floor. I think there's more to come relative to those principle competitors. We'll find more all the time in terms of performance so we're going to keep pushing on, and it's a new platform on which to find performance."

However, Lowe said it was crucial that the team finds a balance between staying competitive this season and not jeopardising the development of next year's car.

"Working out that trade between your prime car and the next year's car is really, really tough, and we go through it every year," he said. "You can't completely abandon the new car, but when you are fighting for a championship, which has been the case with us for at least three of the last four seasons - particularly with 2008 when we were still running our car in the wind tunnel in very late October - you have to make a balance.

"You've seen that through the year according to how the championship is going. You've got a group of people, you've got one wind tunnel and you've got to just distribute the effort between the two demands. But we are doing well with next year's car."

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