McLaren are in the mood for a samba:
with Murray Walker.
F1 Racing April 1998.

Ye Gods! Shades of 1988! If Adrian Newey is indeed paid $5 million a year, he is worth every cent. Free Bridgestone
for life and a Mercedes-Benz Maybach to the nice tall man with the fair hair please. Yes, I know he leads a team of designers and technicians, but it all seems to have come magically together since he took the tiller at McLaren.

So what are the prospects for Sao Paulo (duff city, great track) and Buenos Aires (great city, duff track)? Frankly, it's difficult to imagine that we'll get anything other than more of the same. In Melbourne, McLaren / Mercedes / Bridgestone had such a dominant package (the extent of which wasn't fully revealed until Mika set about catching his stupefyingly honourable Scottish team-mate) that closing the gap will be a daunting task for the rest. Because, could even superstar Michael Schumacher have held the silver (and black) arrows? Possibly, who knows?

So it'll be midnight oil by the bucketful at Didcot and Maranello, Silverstone and Magny Cours, and all the other team bases before the flight to Brazil. And that's very unlikely to be long enough to make much difference. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not then let's pray that as a result of all their hard work, the McLaren boys are far enough ahead of everyone else after Argentina to let their drivers battle against each other without restraint like, dare I say it, used to happen in the old days.

-End of Article--

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