Sky Sports Exclusive: Sam Michael Q&A

McLaren's Sporting Director tells Sky Sports Online about the team's new car, life after Lewis at Woking, and their expectatons for the new season...

People speak of 'design philosophies' and McLaren have now chosen one where more air goes under the car. Does that mean it's inherently better than the one you went with last year?
SM: "We believe it is. We believe everything we put on the car is better than last year. Remember, it's coupled with a suspension change on the front as well, which has gone from a pushrod to a pullrod. So there's a couple of changes there." When was the decision made?
SM: "You pretty much have to fix your chassis these days by June, July time, so we were well into that by the early part of the European season." So you could say it's a case of short-term pain in the early races for long-term gain?
SM: "Our target is to win the first race, so we don't plan on having any short-term pain. But inevitably we're doing more work than had we stayed where we were. But had we stayed where we were, we definitely would have gone a bit flat and been thinking we hadn't done enough. Whereas everyone's now got a feeling that we've definitely done enough and we've got to work hard to optimise it quickly. I'd always much rather come from that direction than the other one, because once you're fixed in for the year, that's it. You can't get out: you can't change the chassis height during the year; you can't change the sidepods around where the impact structures are; you can't change to a pullrod, not these days. So you're fixed for 12 months on that." But the downside of that seems to be that there's so much more to understand. Jenson has said during testing that he's found it difficult to work on set-up...
SM: "Creating engineering challenges can never be described as a downside. That's only ever interesting and fascinating...that's what keeps us engineers alive!" Can you outline what's in McLaren's pre-season upgrade package?
SM: "Most of the parts went on during Friday afternoon (of the last Barcelona test). There's quite a few bodywork changes that went on." So all the upgrades for Melbourne are all bodywork?
SM: "No, not entirely." I know teams can be reticent about these things...
SM: "That's because they change all the time. Because if I said, 'We've got a new rear wing', for example, there might be two reasons why we don't run a new rear wing: it might not have correlated well or something else happened in the tunnel that changed our understanding and that wing became obsolete very quickly. So we've learnt from past experience not to say what the actual upgrades are until they've actually done the grand prix." Now Lewis has left McLaren, people have said that the team will design a car to suit Jenson Button's needs. How much input does a driver have in the design of a car?
SM: "The driver's most important input is telling what the balance is and what the changes are. When it comes to driveability and transient responses in the car, the driver's input is still quite important. You don't need a driver to say more downforce makes you go faster, more power, more grip. But when you change the car's handling characteristics, or the way it warms its tyres up, for example, that's where you need the driver. And a driver of Jenson's experience is pretty important. He's got a lot more experience than Lewis has - he's done more seat hours - and this is his 14th season. "It's those areas that they help contribute on and you can't