McLaren racing director Eric Boullier says Fernando Alonso is “raring to go” ahead of his return to racing at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Alonso was forced to sit out the final pre-season test as well as the opening race in Melbourne as a result of concussion sustained in an accident at Barcelona in February. With the Spaniard still needing to pass FIA checks on Thursday, he is expected to be fit to race and Boullier says Alonso can’t wait to get back in the MP4-30.
"I’m pleased to see Fernando back in the car – he’s raring to go and I know he’s been working hard behind the scenes to prepare himself for this weekend,” Boullier said. “I would also like to thank Kevin [Magnussen] for his hard work in Melbourne; he provided extremely useful feedback and, despite not being able to race, has been a strong support in our development of the MP4-30 so far.
“Both McLaren and Honda are working together as one team to improve our package, day in, day out, and we’re looking forward to arriving in Malaysia with the aim of getting more mileage under our belts and pushing forward with car development."
With McLaren comfortably off the pace at the first race in Australia, Boullier says the progress made as a result of completing a race weekend should not be underestimated.
"Obviously the result in Melbourne is not one that McLaren-Honda would have dreamt of. However, our mileage over the weekend proved invaluable and we’ve taken a lot of learning and insight from the data we collected. It’s also encouraging that we ran in each session, which enabled us to make progress with necessary system checks, set-up variation and aero tests.”
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