McLaren's race against time
In Barcelona, Spain
As the teams work night and day to prepare their new cars for the start of the season in just over two weeks' time, the Mole hears that all is not going entirely to plan at .
On current pace, team appear to be behind not only their chief rivals - who have been consistently quick all winter - but most of the midfield teams as well.
With the caveat that judging pace in testing is notoriously tricky, a study of the lap times in this week suggests that Ferrari have a slight edge on , who have a small advantage over an unsplittable group comprising , the new , and .
? Their car appears for the moment to be a barely credible 0.5 seconds a lap slower than that group - and 0.8secs behind Ferrari.
The test - at - is McLaren's penultimate test of the winter, and at this stage they should probably be perfecting their set-ups for the first race in at the end of the month and trying out some new developments for the succeeding races in , China and beyond.
Instead, the Mole has been told, McLaren are trying to work out why the data from the in which their car's aerodynamics were honed does not match the results from the car on the track.
The Mole's sources say that, essentially, the rear of the car - the and the rear wing - is not doing what the figures in the wind tunnel suggested it would.
The first sign that something was wrong came when the cars of world champion and his team-mate were fitted with McLaren's 2008 rear wing during tests in Portugal and Jerez in January and February.
These wings are - which led onlookers from rival teams to wonder what possible benefit could come from running a rear wing for which the car was not designed.
The second sign was Hamilton leaving the pits in with fluorescent green paint on the leading edges of the car. The reason? So the team's aerodynamicists could get a better idea how the air was actually being blown around the car when at speed.
Now, in Barcelona, McLaren have been running a Mark II version of their diffuser along with a 2009 rear wing.
It is too soon to conclude whether their problems have been solved - and, to be fair, too soon to tell whether McLaren really are struggling as much as they appear to be.
If they are, be in no doubt that if anyone can get out of this, McLaren can. Their clever people and vast resources will fix this lack of rear grip, sooner or later.
The team will be working like crazy at the in to devise a new diffuser and, probably, a new rear wing in time for the start of the season.
But time is fast running out.
The teams have to pack the freight for Australia on Thursday 19 March, before it flies out from Stansted airport on Friday 20. The last team members fly out on Wednesday 25 March, only four days before the race.
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