Eric Boullier says McLaren-Honda has been working flat out in the off-season to maintain the “aggressive” development pace that has resulted in the “innovative” MP4-31.
Last month, the team revealed it had to sacrifice its Christmas break to meet the tighter build schedule following a late change to the 2016 calendar that had brought the season opening Australian Grand Prix forward by two weeks.
While pleased to see McLaren and Honda rise to the challenge, Boullier explains there is still more potential to unlock as the two partners seek to shake off a torrid 2015 campaign.
“First of all, we must recognise the very hard work performed over the past few months by everyone in Woking, Sakura and Milton Keynes,” said the McLaren racing director.
“The guys have shown intense dedication throughout the winter period, and the result is that they’ve successfully kept our aggressive build and development programmes on schedule.
“As such, all our team members are a credit to McLaren-Honda, and consequently we’re incredibly grateful to everyone involved in the development of the MP4-31.
“But we’re never satisfied, which is why we’ve continued to strengthen our engineering team in recent weeks and months, and we’re confident that the changes we’ve made will improve and accelerate our car-development progress in the future.”
McLaren’s 2015 issues were evident as early as pre-season testing when Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button could only cover limited mileage. Boullier thus hopes this year's group sessions, which kick off on Monday 22 February at Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona, will prove to be much smoother.
“The two Barcelona tests will merely herald the continuation of the huge collaborative task that all departments have been engaged in during the off-season,” added the Frenchman, who will work with new chief executive officer Jost Capito once the latter has moved across from Volkswagen.
“We’ll be aiming to spend the four days of the first test carefully and methodically: extracting the maximum from the time available, and concentrating our efforts on proving out our central systems, operational procedures and electronics checks.
“We’ll need to verify our work in the garage before we can expect any miracles on track – essentially, to ensure we walk before we can run. After all, testing is just that: testing.
“But be assured, we’re motivated and determined, and we’re pulling together.”
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