McLaren racing director Eric Boullier is confident the team is just a few steps away from making regular appearances in the final part of qualifying.
Mclaren and Honda made massive strides forward with reliability and performance in the offseason with their MP4-31 but this was not enough to see them into Q3 at the Australian Grand Prix. Despite not making Q3 and not scoring points in the race Boullier is confident with the upgrades McLaren and Honda have in the pipeline will be enough to see them regularly competing in Q3 and the top ten in the race.
“The pace of the car is good, very encouraging, and we know we have something to fight with this year,” Boullier told Autosport.
“We know we have a few things coming in the pipeline which should make us a regular contender in Q3.
“If you are regularly in Q3 then it’s a different story. You can fight for points.”
Boullier went on to say he believed the team good have scored good points in Australia if Alonso had not crashed and the team had made a wiser tyre choice for Jenson Button during the red flag caused by Alonso’s accident.
“We got it wrong with the tyre choice.”
“The degradation was too high, we suffered with graining and then we lost the pace.
“When we went to the medium tyres we were back into the right place, but by then it was too late as we were stuck behind [Felipe] Nasr.
“We couldn’t pass, even though we were much faster.”
He also revealed they were allowed to communicate more information over their team radio to Button and Alonso by the FIA than originally outlined in the new radio regulations after the team suffered technical issues caused by the FIA.
“It was a bit of a headache,” smiled Boullier.
“But we were lucky. We had a little break from the FIA.
“I don’t want to go into the details, but when the FIA sent some signals, some cars had a problem with the dashboard, like us.
“We lost all communication with the dashboard, so we were allowed to communicate a couple of [items of] information.
“Normally we would not have been allowed, so there was a lot of brainstorming on the pitwall.”
