McLaren team in emergency talks

The McLaren team held a crisis meeting at their base in Woking yesterday, it is rumored. Lewis Hamilton joined the meeting after returning from the Barcelona test to join teammate Heikki Kovalainen, Team Principal Martin Whitmarsh and senior members of the team's technical crew.

Having introduced a new scheduled aerodynamic update for this week's Barcelona test – featuring modifications to the car's floor – the MP4-24 was significantly off the pace for both drivers, with Hamilton's final time of Thursday almost two full seconds slower than the fastest from Rubens Barrichello's Brawn entry.

Despite one more four-day test still to come in Jerez next week, Whitmarsh was pessimistic when describing the car's on-track displays so far: "I don't think we have done a good enough job, there is no point hiding from that face – we just have to get our heads down and work hard to fix it. We will rectify the problem as quickly as we can, even though that might not be as quickly as we would like," he is quoted as saying by The Guardian.