Fernando Alonso took comfort from the fact that his MCL32 enjoyed a more reliable day during testing in Melbourne compared to during testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya a few weeks ago.
McLaren Honda Formula 1 Team are almost waiting for an issue to arise as Honda has once again failed to deliver a reliable and competitive engine; problems were rife during testing and significantly hampered the team’s track time.
The Spaniard completed 37 laps, a low number in comparison to the other teams, and at best finished 12th. But his time of 1:26.000 was still 2.4 seconds off the pace set by Lewis Hamilton and the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team.
“Relative to winter testing, we had fewer issues today than we had in Barcelona,” he said. “We could run a little bit more, so we were able to extract more potential from the car – that’s positive.
“Still, there’s definitely more to come, and we still need to keep working because we’re quite far away from the front-runners in terms of lap time.
“Every time we were on track today, though, we learned something. We were also able to test some new components, and they seem to be working fine, which is positive. There’s still a lot more to come from us, and we need to maximise our potential.”
