It was a difficult opening few days for the new McLaren Honda project.
It was to be expected, a brand new power-unit joining Formula One and trying to compete with Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault who have over a years worth of development ahead of them.
Expectations would have been realistic and McLaren Honda themselves did state that they were relatively happy with the progress made in Jerez.
But with that all said it cannot have been easy watching the likes of Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg pound around the Spanish track relentlessly, completed 1,420 miles over the four days, whilst Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso for McLaren could only muster 217 miles.
McLaren weren’t quick either, setting the slowest time on all four of the days sessions.
But the new project took its first steps and have set a base to build from and arguably its a better base than Red Bull Racing had set by this stage and they won three races last season.
The first steps of development are to resolve the reliability issues the team had which limited them to just 79 laps in four days.
So upgrades to fix a fuel pump failure, oil level issues and various sensor problems will be on the list.
‘There are many difficulties that we had this week, but we will fix it before the next Barcelona test and get back to work again,’ Honda’s motorsport chief Yasuhiso Arai told Autosport Magazine.
He continued: ‘The new engine will be a step up, because we are taking things step-by-step. Some parts will be final [race] parts, but not all.
‘There are several testing parts still, and we will take final confirmation on those just before Melbourne.’
‘There was no major big trouble, Our package is very tight and skinny, but some points have been validated.
‘It is a tight package, but we had no big trouble with it.’
Honda plan upgrades for next test
