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McLaren racing director Eric Boullier has deemed himself pleased with the steady improvement this season of the team's performance relative to its peers at the top.
McLaren certainly had its work cut out for its at the outset of the 2016 season following a dismal campaign last year, the worst in the team's 50-year history, as it fell victim to the depressed level of performance and unreliability of Honda's power unit.
But the McLaren-Honda partnership pulled out all the stops to work on its issues with the bulk of the team's progress coming from the improved Japanese power unit.
"We are pleased if I may say this to obviously catch up on the big teams, out develop the big teams," Boullier said.
"That means the momentum behind is working, that means what we are doing is working, is delivering. We just want to do the best job we can until the end of the season while we are preparing for 2017 as well."
The Frenchman highlighted a few outstanding performances achieved thus season by the team and its drivers.
"Perhaps the most amazing performance for the team was recovering from Fernando's horrific crash in Australia," remembers Boullier.
"It was a challenge to have to rebuild a brand new car and at the same time turn up in Bahrain and bring a rookie in [Stoffel Vandoorne] who did a brilliant job.
The McLaren man also praised specific performances of both its regular drivers.
"Fernando Alonso had a brilliant race in Monaco where he finished 5th. In Austria we had a very good qualifying session, with Jenson starting third on the grid.
"But finishing the race in sixth place was obviously a great result on a track where the lay-out was not suited to our car performance."
Boullier also expressed his satisfaction with the internal workings of McLaren and its capacity to transfer to the race track the potential imagined on the drawing board and produced in the factory.
"A great performance from the team is obviously having nearly a 95% correlation level between what we can simulate, produce, manufacture, deliver at the track and race which is amazing."
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