McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier has once more played down the team’s problems during pre-season testing, after encountering another setback on Wednesday.
McLaren suffered a disrupted start to testing last week, amid a wheel nut issue and exhaust clip problem, but logged substantial mileage to conclude running on Friday.
However, Stoffel Vandoorne completed just 38 laps on the opening day of Tuesday’s second test, twice stopping due to a loss of electrical power, necessitating a battery change, before a hydraulic leak truncated his day.
Fernando Alonso took over duties on Wednesday morning and logged 47 laps during the opening two hours, but stopped on track with a suspected oil leak, and has not re-appeared since, with an engine change set to leave his MCL33 benched until 15:00 local time.
Boullier, though, has stressed that the setbacks are to be expected.
“This is not engine related,” Boullier said of Alonso’s stoppage.
“This is a small oil leak we had to the car which unfortunately meant the engine died, so we have to change the engine now.
“They want to obviously inspect the engine before putting some more miles on it.
“The car breaking down, yes, it's testing, so we have some little issues which we have to fix, but it's just testing. It's part of the process. We are on top of this.
“It's a new partnership with Renault, completely new packaging for the car as well. This is testing. Give us time and it's fine.”
Boullier is optimistic that McLaren will not fall behind its rivals and can still complete its scheduled run plan.
“The time we lose in the garage is time we don’t spend on track,” he said.
“We had eight days of testing, obviously a couple of them under snow conditions.
“We are trying to make a plan and every time we lose track time we have to revise the plan and make some other priorities so that something we will not test.
“We have to make sure we do the most of the priorities and that should be OK, that should be enough.”
