Eric Boullier was thrilled with McLaren Honda Formula One Team’s uninterrupted day of testing, with the absence of reliability problems allowing them to complete everything they had planned.
Surprisingly, the team boss even admitted that they had turned up the settings.
“Everything has worked perfectly today in terms of reliability, and we were even able to push a little bit in terms of settings,” he said. “We’ve managed a ‘proper’ test today, and really made the most of every opportunity out on track.
“Everything we’ve planned, we’ve tested, and we’ve done back-to-back runs, so I’m really happy with the work we’ve completed today.”
This reliability, though welcome, makes identifying the causes behind their most recent string of issues even more difficult. This is especially true when you consider that they have run the car more aggressively.
But it has allowed them to make up for the lost testing in Barcelona and may rule out some areas of concern for Honda during their investigations.
“It’s complicated to understand the issues we’ve had over the past few days, since today we’ve managed to run without any problems, but Honda are working hard to understand where the weaknesses lie,” he continued.
“We’ve been able to run with a more aggressive set-up today, gathered a lot of information and tested a lot of solutions, so in terms of both data and results it’s been a very positive day of testing.”
With testing now over, all that is left is for McLaren to take all of the derived data back home and put it to use in Sochi. Who knows, their improved car may surprise us all.
“Being able to do a good amount of running on the final day has come at the right time,” he added. “Now, we’ll head back to the factory with even more motivation to keep pushing forward.
“It’s a quick turnaround to crunch the numbers and prepare ourselves for Sochi, which for sure will be another tough weekend for us, but, as always, we’re ready for the challenge.”
