Eric Boullier: “No fundamental problems with the design”

208 laps and 968 kilometers on the MCL32's odometer after four days of testing, the duo McLaren- Honda did not make the start to the 2017 season hoped for during Barcelona's first runs in Catalonia.

The cause was problems with the Japanese Power Unit, with a problem with the oil tank on the first day and a loss of power on Tuesday, having reduced the time spent on the track by Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne.

Eric Boullier, competition director of McLaren Racing, admitted on the F1 website, that the situation was obviously not that desired by the Anglo-Japanese tandem. “We had other expectations when we arrived in Barcelona but the week did not start as we hoped, underlines the Frenchman.

I think there's a little more work to be done on the Japan side to investigate why we've had these issues. Unexpected problems on our side, just like for Honda.

These are new problems. There is a solution, but it wasn't the plan to have these problems. They're not really serious, because there are no fundamental problems with the design. »

Asked about McLaren's difficulties in its race to return to the level of the top teams, Eric Boullier recalls that the Power Unit remains a major element in the performance of single-seaters, despite the new technical regulations offering disruptive aerodynamics this year.

“The Power Unit is the basis of performance, much more than before. In the past, when you had a difference of 30, 40 or 50 horsepower, you could compensate for that with a good chassis.

But with these Power Units, we're not just talking about power: we're talking about quality of deployment, quality of recovery, deployment strategy, things that we didn't know at the beginning and that we discovered last year .

And that's where Mercedes is always at the forefront, because they discover things before anyone else. And that's why you have a much bigger difference in performance than in the past. »

Honda is still investigating the causes of the power loss experienced by Stoffel Vandoorne on Tuesday, with the V6 turbo/hybrid unit having been shipped to the workshops of the Sakura R&D center in Japan.