Eric Boullier says McLaren-Honda heads to this weekends’ Austrian Grand Prix aiming “to get back into the points” and solve the reliability issues that hampered the team’s progress in the last two races.
Despite recently introducing a new spec of turbocharger worth two engine development tokens, McLaren-Honda finished outside the top 10 at power-sensitive venues Montreal and Baku.
Worse, Jenson Button retired with a power unit failure in Canada, while team-mate Fernando Alonso suffered a race-ending gearbox problem in Azerbaijan.
“After returning from the last two races without a top 10 finish, our immediate aim is to get back into the points,” Boullier said. “In Canada, Fernando finished 11th, and Jenson achieved the same result in Azerbaijan, neither of which track best suited our car’s characteristics, so we’ll be hoping to do a little better in Austria this weekend.
“We also need to address the reliability issues that accounted for one of our cars in each of the last two races. We’ve been worked hard since we got back to Woking to pin-point the problem and try to ensure that there isn’t a recurrence.”
McLaren currently sits seventh in the Constructors’ championship with 24 points, only three shy of its entire 2015 tally.
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