Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

McLaren might not be competitive until May

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier admits the team might not be able to get the most out of its car until the Spanish Grand Prix in May.

Friday’s 101 laps was by far the most mileage completed by McLaren in one day, with the team having only completed 350 laps in total with one day of testing remaining. With just 39 laps possible on Saturday due to an oil leak, McLaren keeps finding reliability issues with the end of the final test approaching.

Asked if the team will not be as ready as it hoped for the Australian Grand Prix, Boullier replied: “Yes, that’s a fair assessment.

“We won’t be as ready as we would like but we will do our best, obviously. We have covered most of the issues, we have covered most of the systems and the positive is everything is working as per design and plan. The reliability is still a concern, clearly, and I don’t know how long it is going to take to be honest.

“We have some plans in place now which have been drastically improved in both our organisations working together. I think it’s going to take a few races but we should be at least maybe by Europe ready to be more competitive.”

Full times and day three of the final test as it happened

Click here for the gallery from day three 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.