McLaren believe they’ll be capable of fighting for points with both cars at the next race in three weeks time according to racing director Eric Boullier.
The Woking outfit has yet to score a single point in four races – their worst ever start to a Formula 1 season – but that should all change come the Spanish Grand Prix with the introduction of aero upgrades and an upgraded power unit.
“After finishing 11th [in Bahrain] nearly on merit, if we have the increase of performance Honda promises for Barcelona then we should ideally be able to not be lapped anymore and to go for points,” the Frenchman told Autosport.
Although better race pace is expected, Boullier is still expecting Q2 to be the aim on Saturday despite Fernando Alonso only missing the cut to get through to Q3 by four tenths in Bahrain.
“Our qualifying pace is still far from [our rivals], so Q2 should be the target and after finishing 11th in Bahrain, we want to finish in the points.”
Honda F1 boss Yasuhisa Arai is confident they can close the top speed gap which saw Alonso losing out by more than 15km/h on the main straight.
“Obviously there is an engine-performance deficit in the straight-line and you can see the top speed is not there yet, but it is coming,” he confirmed.
It’s believed Honda still have a number of development tokens remaining, allowing them to bring yet more updates later in the season.
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