Daniel Ricciardo had his first taste of the MCL36 at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Thursday, with the Australian leading the way in the morning session before dropping to third overall in the afternoon.
The McLaren F1 Team driver was delighted with the reliability of the new car and praised the team for the hard work in preparing it in short order, so it was ready for testing.
Both Ricciardo and team-mate Lando Norris have been able to break the one-hundred lap barrier so far in testing, and the Australian says that whilst the car has some good strengths, there are some areas of weakness they still need to work on.
“A good day from many angles,” admitted Ricciardo. “I think reliability was great. That’s on the team and everyone who’s worked hard to put this car together, so massive thank you to them.
“They’re pretty awesome to build a whole new car, put it on track and have it run so smoothly, so big thanks to them again. Both days have been over 100 laps, which for me and Lando gives us more opportunity to learn the car and push ourselves, so really pleased with that.
“We’ve got some good strengths and we just need to keep working on a few of the areas where we can improve.”
“Our second day of testing in Barcelona has been very productive” – Andrea Stella
Andrea Stella, the Racing Director of Racing at McLaren, says Thursday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was a very productive one for the team, with very few problems creeping in.
Stella says the team have been able to complete a good number of tests and gain a lot of information and knowledge on every run they complete, and he hopes this continues throughout the rest of the pre-season testing programme.
“Our second day of testing in Barcelona has been very productive,” said Stella. “With Daniel in the car today, we were able to put together a lot of laps with no particular problems, either from an operational or a reliability point of view.
“We’ve completed a series of tests and acquired a lot of information on tyre performance, set-up and aerodynamics. We’re learning more about this new car with each run, and this is helping us extract the most from the MCL36 in preparation for the season ahead.”
