Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

McLaren fighting hard towards the front - Boullier

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier says the team’s progress since the first pre-season test shows how hard it is working to return to winning ways.

The return of Honda saw a tough pre-season for McLaren, with little mileage completed during testing and the team having to run its car conservatively at the opening race of the season. Since then, McLaren has been steadily improving and Jenson Button delivered its first points of 2015 in Monaco. While Boullier says the result in isolation is not one to be celebrated, it does highlight how far the team has come since early March.

“Of course, we can’t be pleased with eighth position, and we’re still a long way behind where we want to be,” Boullier said. “Nonetheless, I’m proud of our progress and the rate of development we’re maintaining, and we’re continuing this push with every grand prix. Although I don’t like to dwell on the past too much, comparing the pre-season tests with our current performance shows just how hard we’ve worked to fight towards the front.”

However, Boullier says the biggest negative for the team has been a lack of reliability in recent races, with China the only round which has seen both cars finish.

“Our more promising performances have been scuppered by frustrating technical issues though, most recently on Fernando [Alonso]’s side of the garage, so we’re working hard to iron these out so that we can really see the potential of both cars and keep developing. We must target improved reliability and consistency in order to achieve our maximum potential.”

Click here for a look back at Robert Kubica's only Formula One victory in Canada

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.