McLaren's principal race engineer Phil Prew has said he thinks the team is 0.3 - 0.5 seconds off the pace of Red Bull.
Sebastian Vettel has taken pole position at each of the first three races this season, and took comfortable victories in Australia and Malaysia. Although Lewis Hamilton stopped that run by winning in China, he owed much to the three-stop strategy employed by the team. Prew said that McLaren was seeking to make up the difference.
"I think that we're between three tenths and half a second off the pace of Red Bull," Prew told a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in. "Obviously that's the gap that we're aiming to close."
"We don't have the fastest car at the moment. Red Bull are still the team that we're trying to close the gap on, and we're adding updates to the car in Turkey which hopefully will allow us to close that gap. As we've seen from the first three races the differences between the cars does vary from track to track. I think Turkey should be a reasonably strong track for ourselves, and if the developments deliver performance and we utilise the tyres well then we can continue to be competitive.
But we're also conscious that everybody else will be aiming to improve their car at the same time so as always we hope that we've done enough and more than other people."
When asked where Red Bull's qualifying advantage may lie, Prew said the way it makes use of its exhaust system was one area he felt it found performance.
"We are aiming to improve the performance of our car right the way through the range, both in qualifying and in the race. I think tyre optimisation may be one area, and the use of elaborate engine modes may be another, with the generation of downforce being quite highly influenced with the exhaust flows. There are many reasons why it may exist and we are aiming to improve our performance in qualifying and the race, and hopefully close in both areas."
Prew said that it wasn't just Red Bull that they were looking at, however, saying that the whole battle at the front was close and that Ferrari were capable of making big progress.
"With regards to Ferrari, for sure we never underestimate their performance and are fully aware that they can take a big step of improvement once they get the full understanding of their car and getting it to work properly, or get the full potential from it. I think we've seen at times - certainly in races - that Ferrari have shown very strong pace. They don't seem to have hooked it up in qualifying just yet, but we're fully aware that we both need to chase down the Red Bull's and keep a weary eye out for the cars behind, both Ferrari and Mercedes and indeed the Renault's who have shown very good pace as well."
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