Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

McLaren promises 'much more performance' for Melbourne

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier says the team will have "much more performance" on its car come the Australian Grand Prix.

Following a difficult 2015, McLaren has enjoyed a much more productive pre-season this year as Honda has delivered a step forward with its power unit in terms of both performance and reliability. From a chassis point of view, Boullier says there are a number of new parts McLaren has been unable to prepare for testing but which will be added to the car in Melbourne.

A closer look at the McLaren MP4-31

"We are not running the full 2016-spec here," Boullier said. "We are a bit behind the programme so that means we are going to turn up to Australia with more bits on the car which unfortunately have not been signed off here but I think we have been able to run at least most of the days which is very good news.

"In terms of the chassis it is important that we could go through all the systems which we couldn’t do last year, so for us it is a good achievement. I think now we have a reliable car more or less to start the season.

"So we are definitely more confident and I think there will be more to come now. The base sure looks OK and there will be much more performance coming in the coming weeks.”

And Boullier explained there was no major drama in terms of not getting the new parts to the final day of testing in Barcelona on Friday.

“It’s just manufacturing and production, nothing else. Nothing wrong, we have just been maybe too ambitious. When you stretch to it sometimes it doesn’t work, so nothing wrong.

“Everything is fine, we just missed by one day unfortunately, and that’s it. It happens sometimes, you are obviously trying to stretch and to be on the edge.

"We wanted to give the maximum time to the aerodynamicists to develop the package and then you have to compress the lead time on the production, something will happen and then you are behind. That’s it. Nothing wrong, no drama, no stories, nothing. It just happens, it happens every day and every race, to be honest.”

Follow live coverage and timing from pre-season testing here

GALLERY: Pre-season testing

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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.