By Parminio
March 22 2004

Once again, Kimi retires from the race with a failure, but DC manages to hang on for a few much needed points in Malaysia by finishing 6th. It wasn't good once again for McLaren. Although there was a little good news. The MP4-19, which has struggled in a big way to keep up with the rest of the front runners, struggled once again at Malaysia. Although the car is still just over a second off the pace of the front running Ferrari, the car did seem to handle much better than the abismal understeering boat anchor we saw at Australia. The new front wing design, along with the hotter weather, gave the MP4-19 a marked improvement.

It wasn't enough.

Once again, Kimi Raikkonen retired from the race with another failure. Running in 3rd place for a good part of the race, he was overtaken with a bad pit exit that heralded the oncoming failure. Just a short while later, Kimi's McLaren would grid to a halt. Again.

David Coulthard on the other hand did as he did in Australia and nursed his MP4-19 home in 6th place getting McLaren it's only points. David is the only points scorer in two races now.

McLaren's woes are just beginning. Jenson Button in his BAR showed to have more than enough pace to take McLaren. Mark Webber's Jaguar showed good pace as well, but Mark had the luck of Job. Nothing went right. Nearly stalling at the start, losing his best ever qualifying 2nd possition, things just went from bad to worse for him.

Going into the first Grand Prix ever at the new Bahrain circuit next race, one wonders what McLaren can possibly do to fix the floundering MP4-19. Lack of pace is not the least of the problems, as reliability has become a major issue as well. With 2 failures in 4 attempts, it doesn't look good for McLaren Mercedes at all.

McLaren, who plan to introduce a B-spec of the MP4-19 at some point, have to find a way to score points soon. If not, any hope of a championship in either the drivers or constructors title race will be dashed. With the new points system, it is much harder to close up the gap to the frontrunners, and that gap is already huge.

Hopefully, more improvements can be made for the Bahrain race that will get McLaren back on pace. It's been a dismal start for McLaren this season, but hopefully things will get sorted soon to get McLaren back into the hunt.