Mclaren last min upgrades could bring them back into contention

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Mclaren bring changes to Exhaust System

This could bring Mclaren back in contention for 2011 World Championship race.

The British team, with drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, has been off the pace in the pre-season test sessions leading up to Albert Park.

But McLaren said yesterday it had discovered a breakthrough that could slash a second from the lap times of its latest MP4-26, enough to leapfrog it up at least to the level of Renault and Mercedes.

The key is in the complicated exhaust system - nicknamed "the octopus" - originally fitted to the car and its replacement with a much simpler design.

The change, developed in the McLaren wind tunnel in Britain over the past week, includes a new floor design.

"I think it will still be a challenging weekend, but I'm hopeful that we'll put on more than a second in performance," McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh said.

He said the team might have pushed too far in its efforts to use exhaust gases to gain extra downforce by flowing them over the aero diffuser at the back of the car.

It is an area where a lot of teams have been experimenting before the new season.

"I think the exhaust systems have become quite extreme on quite a lot of the cars. I think we, in particular, had very extreme solutions," Whitmarsh said.

"But I think that they were not delivering, in my opinion, sufficient benefits for their complexity."

McLaren was air freighting new parts to Melbourne to update their cars before the start of practice tomorrow.

Whitmarsh said the catch-up push began once McLaren realised the performance deficit to the front-running Red Bull and Ferrari teams during testing in Barcelona.

"We have made some fairly dramatic changes, and those changes we will see in Australia," he said.