Eric Boullier has confirmed that McLaren's late switch to Renault power for 2018 has not compromised its plans for next season, although the team is two weeks behind its original schedule.
Following months of speculation, it was confirmed at last weekend's Singapore Grand Prix that McLaren had divorced Honda for 2018 and that the team would instead use Renault power for next season for the first time.
This triggered a number of deals, with Toro Rosso announcing a three year partnership with Honda and Renault signing Carlos Sainz Jr on a loan deal for 2018.
Although McLaren will have to work hard to catch up on its original schedule following a number of delays caused by other parties, Boullier believes that the Woking-based team will be able to enter 2018 at full speed and with full strength.
"Obviously it's a challenge," said Boullier. "Now we have to be [working] 24/7 I would say to try recover a couple of weeks where an ideal decision could've been taken. But, two weeks is recoverable.
"It won't be any compromise next year. Of course, we don't have the same experience as some of the costumers, so we have to discover the package.
"But, I think we can trust our engineers to do a very good job and two weeks are recoverable, but this is going to be a huge load of work and I'm glad to see there's a lot of energy going inside McLaren to try and recover as fast as possible."
Despite next season's McLaren having a different power unit, Boullier believes that the team will not need a dramatic change in chassis design and has said that the car will follow the path of this season's MCL32.
Boullier also denied that being behind schedule will mean that McLaren will have to end the development on this season's car with six races remaining: "No. It doesn't mean that at all," he said.
"It just means we are increasing the workload to make sure we can recover, and once we recover we will go back to the standard way to work and we have a different process today about work, because next year's car, despite the change of power unit, it's an evolution so there will be no revolutions. That doesn't change the way we work."
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