McLaren's ability to develop its new car is like "day and night" compared to 2015, according to Eric Boullier.
Last season saw McLaren struggle massively for mileage as a result of reliability issues with the new Honda power unit, with only one car making the start of the Australian Grand Prix. However, 2016's pre-season saw McLaren complete the same amount of laps in the opening two days of testing as it managed across the first two tests a year ago.
Asked how the more consistent running impacts on McLaren's development plans for 2016 compared to last year, Boullier replied: "It’s day and night.
"Last year we couldn’t do anything on the car, so just checking … nothing actually! At least this year we went through a lot of job lists and to-do lists and check lists.
"In terms of systems and even the car itself we pushed some limits on some new designs we had on the car. Some of them failed, some of them didn’t, which is a normal process of testing and I’m happy with the result.
"So at least now we have covered decent mileage over the eight days so we are much more prepared and comfortable. Also feeding back to the machines in Woking, they have more data so we know where we are and it’s going to be a big boost for us in development.”
McLaren was unable to run a number of new parts on the final day of testing in Barcelona but Boullier expects the updates to result in "much more performance" in Melbourne.
ANALYSIS: The two F1 pre-season tests in numbers
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