McLaren-Honda aiming to build on promising data in Bahrain

Nobody will be surprised by Eric Boullier's hopes that next weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix will provide less drama for McLaren-Honda compared to its memorable outing in Australia a fortnight ago.

The Woking outfit's racing director will be looking to boost the team's progress and further consolidate the promising advancements which materialized over the winter.

But the Frenchman wished to first and foremost commend his team on the extensive workload it faced following Fernando Alonso's massive crash in Melbourne.

"The race in Australia was certainly an eventful one for McLaren-Honda," Boullier said.

"First of all, I was very happy to see Fernando walk away after such a heart-stopping incident. In addition, I’d like to say a huge thank you to all our McLaren and Honda employees for the incredible efforts going on behind the scenes to get the spare chassis built and ready to race next weekend.

"It’s a truly remarkable achievement in between flyaway races, and a testament to our incredibly strong teamwork.

“We’re certainly hoping for a less dramatic race in Bahrain, and will be aiming to build on the promising initial data we’ve collected from our car, which shows a definite improvement in pace from last year’s package.

"There’s still much more potential to unlock and performance to find, but the encouraging leap made from testing to Melbourne has shown what’s possible, and we will keep pushing to improve our pace and develop our strengths by continuing to bring updates to the car at every race.

Racing in Bahrain is of major significance to McLaren as the country's Mumtalakat sovereign wealth fund remains a shareholder of the British conglomerate.

"The Bahrain Grand Prix has become something of a home race for us, and we’re very proud to be racing in front of our shareholders and enthusiastic fans. The spectacle of the Bahrain International Circuit is something very special.

"Racing under floodlights always creates a unique atmosphere and the fans get to enjoy action on track in completely different settings over the course of the weekend.

"For the engineers, it’s a battle to juggle many different constraints – temperatures, track surfaces, brake wear, tyres, fuel consumption – and we’ve already learned a lot about how our car performs in different conditions from Melbourne, which we’ll be putting to good use.

"In Bahrain we’ll be looking to discover our true pace and put our package to work in the tough desert conditions."

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