McLaren racing director Eric Boullier has admitted the team are 50 per cent behind their test schedule at the moment, but is also confident the car is a step ahead of last years.
Reliability hasn’t been on McLaren’s side with each day presenting engine partner Honda with a new problem. Jerez saw the team complete just 79 laps over four days, but things have improved a little with the MP4-30 surpassing that tally by day two in Barcelona.
That still isn’t the distance McLaren had hoped to cover though and Boullier admits the reliability troubles have put any performance work on hold.
“We did maybe 50 per cent of what we wanted to do,” he said of Friday’s running. “We have 12 days [in total] to get ready, so if we miss half then we won’t be ready 100 per cent. So our development – in terms of plan – we are 50 per cent behind.
“We are not obviously looking for performance. The expectation of what we wanted to build, it looks like we achieved it so far. Next week there should be some more parts.
“We have a lot of systems to check, that includes a lot parameters to understand the car. We have to do a lot of mileage, to gather data, before we concentrate on performance. The priority is the development programme.”
Despite the troubles, the car itself is performing well when compared to the MP4-29 of last year.
“It’s early days, but what I can say is the car is behaving or handling differently from last year’s car, and the drivers look happier,” he added.
“Especially Jenson, who knows the car obviously, and even Fernando doesn’t look unhappy with the car, which means it’s not bad.”
