McLaren are confident they can get two cars to the finishing line of the Australian Grand Prix in March, despite a number of reliability troubles in Jerez.
Whilst engineering director Matt Morris admitted their first test had been “disappointing” due to the lack of running, he remains confident they can start the new season as they finished in 2014.
“The number of laps and the performance was disappointing, but we were able to tick off some things on the programme that showed us that our new car is good,” he explained.
“Obviously we’re not running at full speed at the moment so we’ve got to make sure we get on top of the issues we’ve got. But if we do get on top of those issues there’s no reason why we can’t be performing where we were at the end of last year.”
The majority of problems have been small ones according to Morris, which offers some satisfaction, therefore finishing the first race of the season with two cars is certainly a realistic target.
“Yes of course it’s realistic,” he said. “Absolutely.
“We’ve had some minor electrical issues which have resulted in a lot of down time but have actually been relatively easy to fix,” he added. “So it’s good in a way that they’re easy to fix but frustrating in another way that they sort of hold the car up for so long.
“So the main thing is we’ve not been burning bodywork, we’ve not been blowing engines up so I’m pretty happy that we’re going to come out of this test with no sort of major issues to resolve.”
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