McLaren's Boullier unfazed by 'niggles' and botched day

McLaren's Eric Boullier says the team's issues which impacted its running on Tuesday are not a cause for concern, and simply an inevitable by-product of testing.

A sudden loss of electrical power brought Stoffel Vandoorne to a halt after just a handful of laps yesterday morning.

Following an investigation of the issue the team elected to swap the MCL33's battery, but the Belgian was later affected by a suspected hydraulic leak which could not be repaired in time for Vandoorne to resume testing.

While pundits and onlookers spoke of an all too familiar state of affairs for the Woking-based outfit, remembering the team's tribulations with Honda, Boullier played down the troubles, insisting they are an integral part of testing.

"Today wasn't the day we had hoped for on track, but, despite this, we aren't overly concerned about the issues that we've faced today," said the McLaren racing director.

"It's obviously not the productive day we had planned, but the problems -- a battery issue and a hydraulic leak -- are the types of niggles that we almost hope and expect to face during testing, in order to prepare us properly for the season ahead.

"We are here to test, and today is what sometimes happens in testing. It's not ideal, and we would have liked more track time, but we're working on it, we're learning from it, and we'll return to the track tomorrow armed with more information," he added.

Vandoorne also insisted on the relatively minor aspect of the day's problems however time consuming they had been to fix.

"Today was challenging because of the issues we had which interrupted our running for today," he said

"We had a few stoppages on track, and we’ve been working through each one to make sure we’re fully prepared for tomorrow.

"The kinds of issue we’ve had weren’t particularly serious, but have taken a relatively long time to fix, so we weren’t able to run as much as we planned," Vandoorne added.

"The conditions this afternoon were quite tricky due to the wind, so the running we did wasn’t so representative.

"We’re hopeful the issues have been fixed and we can have a more productive day tomorrow."

Fernando Alonso takes over testing duties from the Belgian today at the Circuit de Catalunya.

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