McLaren team director Eric Bouiller says the team is making significant progress with the Honda power unit.
McLaren Honda made more progress in Shanghai as for the first time they got both cars across the line as they limped to the chequered flag over a lap behind race winner Hamilton, with Spaniard Fernando Alonso coming home in 12th followed by British team-mate Jenson Button.
Despite McLaren Honda returning to the sport with nowhere near as much speed as the beautiful red and white cars back in the days of Senna and Prost, and not scoring a single world championship point in the first three races of 2015, the teams racing director Eric Boullier believes getting both cars to the finish is a big and important mile stone for the Woking based team.
“We’ve made some progress and it’s actually a good achievement because we had a reliable package here and it’s good to see the race was absolutely trouble-free” the Frenchman told media.
“So it’s a very good sign and very encouraging and rewarding for Honda and the guys back in McLaren. So it’s very good.”
Boullier then went on to explain that now the team have proven reliability underneath the shell of the new MP4-30 they can begin “ramping up” their engine to improve the power and speed of their new car as well as adding new aerodynamic set ups to the car.
“Now we can power up a little bit and we know the potential,” he said. “There’s a lot of potential coming from this point. We have some new specs coming from Europe. In terms of chassis as well, we’ll keep bringing parts in Bahrain.
“We have a good package coming in Barcelona so we’re ramping up. I think it’s as we said – it’s not tenths by tenths but half a second by half a second. So as Fernando said, we started from too far behind but we are catching up. Now we are just behind the midfield pack so hopefully in a few races we will be in front.”
Images courtesy of McLaren-Honda F1 team
