Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

McLaren day ended after 7 laps

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McLaren's pre-season testing woes continued on Thursday as the team was forced to end its running after just 7 laps.

Starting the final test, McLaren had completed just 203 laps in total due to reliability issues with the new Honda power unit. The second test was hit by a faulty MGU-K seal which needed to be redesigned, before the test was brought to a premature end by Fernando Alonso's crash on Sunday.

Jenson Button was back behind the wheel of the MP4-30 on the opening day of the final test as he looked to try and take his pre-season tally behind 100 laps, but he was confined to the garage after just seven laps in the morning session and McLaren soon announced a hydraulic leak had ended running for the day.

The team is left with just three days to try and prepare for the Australian Grand Prix, with Alonso sitting out the test altogether following his accident. Button is likely to carry out the majority of the running over the closing days, despite Kevin Magnussen having been drafted in as Alonso's replacement.

Click here for live coverage of testing from Barcelona

Driver line-ups for the final test

Click here for the gallery from day one of the final test

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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.