Boullier: “Two teams refused to add a day of testing”

The winter testing program will not be changed despite the winter conditions greatly disrupting testing this week at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona. This Wednesday, the track was not opened before midday due to the snow falling since this morning on the Montmelo track.

Several teams were however ready to extend the tests by one day, but a change of program required unanimity at team level.

“It would have been necessary to obtain unanimity to modify the test program, but it appeared that two teams refused yesterday to modify the dates,” said Éric Boullier, the Team Principal of McLaren, on Sky Sports.

McLaren's Eric Boullier says the refusal to agree on an extra day of testing means teams are wasting money because of “selfish interests.” #SkyF1 #F1 #McLaren #F1Testing pic.twitter.com/SuxikfJPua

—Sky Sports F1  (@SkySportsF1) 28th February 2018

The Frenchman does not hide his concern at seeing so much time and resources unnecessarily deployed for so little results.

“It’s clearly a waste of money. confirmed Éric Boullier. We decided to lower costs by limiting winter testing to eight days, but we need these eight days to put on a good show during the first race (March 24 in Melbourne for the Australian GP) and resolve issues. reliability issues and other things that need to be checked. We're losing money being here. We still had time to postpone this day to a time when the weather would have been better. »