Once again McLaren suffer failures.

By Parminio
April 5 2004

Once again, Kimi never made it to his first pit stop, and David retired shortly before race end. Things just keep getting worse for McLaren with no relief in sight.

McLaren's woes continued for yet another race as both David and Kimi retired with failures. Kimi's failure, which is one of the most explosive, comprehensive, after-burner melt downs ever seen, occurred just several laps into the race while trying to fight off Klien in his Jaguar. Good thing for Klien he was ahead of Kimi at the time, or he would have suffered from a SEVERE case of sunburn unless he was wearing about 2,000,000 SPF sunblock.

David retired much later in the race while clinging onto a points position. An air pressure failure in the pneumatic system was the reported cause.

With or without the failures however, McLaren were once again struggling to simply make the mid field of the grid. It's the third consecutive race that has seen McLaren struggle for race pace, not to mention the third consecutive race with an engine failure.

Going back to 2002, when Kimi suffered 6 such failures, one wonders if there is any hope for a recovery of any kind at camp McLaren Mercedes. Mercedes Benz must surely be suffering harsh criticism as their engine has a 55% failure rate over the first three races.

Heading to Imola, one can only hope that things will get better, but with the elevation changes it doesn't look good. Finding the balance of a car on a flat circuit is challenge enough. Finding the balance and pace on a curvy circuit with elevation changes like Imola is far worse for a car with inherit balance problems, which the MP4-19 is.

We as McLaren fans are under no illusions that McLaren are going to struggle once again at Imola, but we hope for the best.