McLaren planning ‘big step’ for Australia

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier says the team is planning “another big step” for the Australian Grand Prix.

With reliability issues relating to the Honda power unit hampering McLaren’s mileage at the opening test at Jerez, the team opted not to bring upgrades to the second test as it still worked at learning alongside its new engine supplier. Boullier said during last week’s test that the team was 50% behind on its testing schedule, and he admits updates have yet to be brought to the MP4-30.

”You can see the car is still in a car-launch configuration,” Boullier said. “We couldn't put enough miles now to justify bringing some upgrades so [at the final test] we may see another step and Australia will see another big step.”

Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai agreed that car development was behind even though the power unit design is almost confirmed.

“The car as a race car I think I have the same feeling as Eric,” Arai told F1i during an exclusive interview. “But the engine design work is almost finished, we can homologate next week but the data setting is still at the baseline.

“So things like the fuel injection, ignition timing, turbo pressure, there is a lot of data that we have to fix but not yet. We are still working day by day checking data and looking at the data to see what is good and what is not. They are very tough days that we spend doing that.”

Click here for the gallery from day four of the second test

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