Fernando Alonso says he hopes McLaren will be able to overcome its latest reliability woes before the first race in Australia but assures the team has the issues “well under control”.
The double world champion ground to a halt on the second day of the second test with what appeared to be an oil leak – the latest in a series of setbacks for the Woking outfit.
Alonso completed 47 laps before the stoppage, setting McLaren’s fastest time of pre-season testing during the morning session.
Asked his thoughts on the the team’s breakdowns across the six completed days of testing, Alonso said: “I think this is more or less normal in every new car.
“Maybe you are new to this but I’m in [my] 18th winter testing and I keep discovering things ever since then.
“It’s the same not only in winter testing, before the test was completely free so we were testing between races. So I remember from Monaco before Canada going to Paul Ricard, doing maybe a 20-lap day and there was no coverage. Now I understand there’s a 100-plus media so every red flag, something like that, attracts a lot of attention.”
Although the Spaniard admits McLaren’s situation is not ideal, with just two days of testing remaining, he insists the British marque is working hard to resolve any concerns.
“There is nothing fundamentally wrong in the car,” he added. “The issues we have, they are well under control. Unfortunately we keep discovering small things every day but that I think is putting us in a strong position for Australia in the way that we are reinforcing all the small issues.
“We would like to do a little bit more laps today. The programme was longer than 50 laps, but at the end of the day we discovered things since yesterday with Stoffel and today with myself.
“This is part of testing, hopefully these things don’t happen on lap 10 in Melbourne so in a way I’m happy to keep making the car stronger.
“All the important parts, all the important things on the programme, we managed to do it in the morning. The rest of the day was more about long runs and putting laps but with no information needed at that time. I’m not too stressed about the laps we lost today.”
