New front wing for McLaren in India

After an encouraging last two races in Japan and Korea, McLaren is looking to further close the gap to rivals Red Bull by introducing upgrades in India, particularly regarding a new front wing.

"We are bringing some new aerodynamic pieces to this event," said team technical director Paddy Lowe in a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in . "We have a new front wing, so that's the main thing and something we hope to take forward through to the last few races of the season. But we are winding towards a close with what we'll bring in terms of updates this year. But things like the front wing will carry forward to next year as the regulations on the front are exactly the same."

Although the technical regulations regarding front wing configurations are unchanged for 2012, a possible loophole discovered by Mercedes has received widespread coverage regarding winglets that divert airflow to produce a 'blown diffuser' effect and increase performance. But according to Lowe, although McLaren have looked at the innovation, it is not something they are immediately concerned with.

"We are aware of that, there has been quite a lot of coverage. We're not feeling desperately excited about it but we'll see. We're not singling it out against many other things we're constantly reviewing that people are coming up with. It's in the nature of the sport. You need to work on your own ideas but not have your head in the sand relative to what other people are doing."

As for the challenge of the new Buddh circuit, Lowe thinks that the similarities to Korea will produce another strong performance.

"It looks like a very exciting circuit and it looks like it as many similarities to Korea where we've just been in the sense that you have a first section with long straights and slowish corners and then the second half of the circuit is dominated by a lot of high speed sequences. So how we will fare relative to our competition I see being reasonably similar to how we were in Korea.

"Obviously it was great there - we got a pole position with Lewis for the first time this year, which was fantastic. So I think we are very hopeful we can deliver the same level of performance this Saturday. In the race it seemed a lot more even between the top three teams and we'll have to see how that pans out but we're confident."

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