McLaren racing director Eric Boullier was happy with the progress the team has managed in the first test despite the weather and small reliability issues which meant a lot of time in the garage.
On the final day of running, McLaren compiled numerous programs which meant both drivers racked up 161 between Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne, more than they've managed to complete in one day since 2014.
Speaking about McLaren's first test Boullier said: "Finally we got rid of the bad weather and mechanical glitches on the car so we could follow our programme. We compressed it since three days to give some priorities to some items.
"We decided to gather some aero data and we will work on some mechanical changes. It’s a learning process obviously, we try to learn as much as we can now."
Throughout the first test the Woking-based outfit saw Fernando Alonso pitched into a spin at the final corner due to his right rear wheel coming loose due to a wheelnut failure after just four laps, a broken exhaust bolt on day two put them in garage for a lengthy period of time while severe cold weather hampered running on the third day.
When asked about the reliability problems the team suffered, he added: "A stupid bolt which broke in the exhaust. It's a £2 problem which cost us a lot of track time. Everything was burned after in the back of the car so we had to rebuild the back of the car.
"It didn’t cost us much to revise the design, it’s more about the track time lost. As you can see the design is still the same and the car is still running.
"[The wheelnut] was not tight enough. Obviously, we investigated more and we are going to have some preventive, like a plan to do some modifications to make sure it doesn’t happen again."
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