Stoffel Vandoorne has labelled McLaren-Honda’s running during testing as “probably its best day” of the 2017 season after a productive stint in the MCL32 in Bahrain.
McLaren has endured a troublesome campaign, amid a lack of reliability and performance, with Vandoorne unable to start last Sunday’s race, compounding a weekend blighted by MGU-H issues.
Test and development driver Oliver Turvey was limited to just 17 laps on Tuesday but Vandoorne amassed 81 laps on Wednesday, as McLaren-Honda sought to make progress.
Honda Principal Engineer Satoshi Nakamara revealed that Wednesday’s running had resulted in progress with the set-up of the power unit, allowing better driveability and a reduction of the vibrations which have so far compromised its season.
Vandoorne welcomed the progress and has now challenged the partnership to ensure that it can learn from its positive day.
“Today has probably been our best day this season so far,” he said.
“It’s the first time that we’ve had a day without any big problems, where we could actually get on with our programme.
“I think we completed everything we wanted to do today, and we went through a lot of set-up stuff that we didn’t manage to do in Barcelona.
“Today was really good, but we need every day to be this good, and there are no guarantees that it will be like this next time.
“We need to learn very carefully from what we’ve done today, and hopefully carry that forward to the next event and see some improvements.
“It’s been very good for both me and the team to be able to try a number of different directions with the set-up.
“There were some new bits on the car – quite fundamental things – that we wanted to try out, and learn about, so it’s been really useful to see where the performance comes from, and very productive.”
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