Vandoorne notes improved McLaren downforce

Stoffel Vandoorne feels McLaren has clearly added more downforce to the MP4-31 since he last drove the car in Bahrain.

The McLaren reserve driver raced in place of the injured Fernando Alonso at the Bahrain Grand Prix, which was the second round of the season. Alonso returned to the car for the following race in China, and Wednesday marked Vandoorne's first chance to drive an F1 car since his grand prix debut.

Speaking to F1i during the final day of the in-season test in Barcelona, Vandoorne says the gap has allowed him to notice how much the car has improved over the past three races.

“It feels better in every area I would say, there’s just more downforce on the car since Bahrain," Vandoorne said. "I mean, Barcelona is a high-downforce circuit as well and we’ve brought some updates here since the beginning of the weekend.

"It felt nice to drive, very well-balanced, I felt very confident in the car so that was nice to feel.”

Having focused on tyres throughout the morning session, Vandoorne says he quickly felt at home in the car having had a full race weekend to get comfortable earlier this year.

“It’s definitely a bit easier. You know what to expect from things and you have been through a race weekend as well, but still that first run feels a little bit strange because in between I’ve driven the Super Formula car as well. So it still takes a couple of laps to get used to but I quickly got back to it and it wasn’t really a problem to jump in the seat today.”

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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.