Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

McLaren development 'day and night' compared to 2015

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.

A closer look at the McLaren MP4-31

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.

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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.