McLaren’s focus has almost entirely been aimed at improving reliability during the opening two pre-season tests, but this week could see a shift toward improving both reliablity and performance rather than just the former.
The team has struggled to complete meaningful mileage and has so far covered just 575 miles during the Jerez and Barcelona tests combined. Mercedes meanwhile has covered just over 2,700 miles.
However racing director Eric Boullier says they’ll begin to bring upgrades to the MP4-30 this week and a big step forward will be made at the first race in Australia.
“We are using every lap we do to feed data back for the development programme,” he explained. “The car is still in launch configuration.
“We couldn’t put on enough miles now to justify bringing upgrades [to Jerez and the first Barcelona test]. But next week we might, and for Australia we will see another big step.”
Speaking last week, Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai also hinted that their focus would begin to shift toward performance.
“I don’t have any reason to think we can’t be prepared for Melbourne,” he said. “Everyone feels a little bit behind the schedule right now, but we have some days next week.
“We’re still data setting so we don’t care about the top speed comparison with the top ones,” he added. “But it’s very important. We’ll change some aero and engine settings [at the next test] to recover top speed and then we’ll compare.”
