McLaren will not be running its new rear wing in the Chinese Grand Prix, despite both Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne testing it in the final practice session on Saturday morning.
Despite opting against running it in the race, McLaren racing director Eric Boullier is confident a tweaked version of the design will be effective in Bahrain.
“We actually ran it on both cars this morning, but because we have some little issues to fix, we decided to not race it, so it didn’t run it in qualifying,” Boullier said.
“But it is going to be back next week in Bahrain. For all the other upgrades, yes they did work.”
Alonso was delighted with his qualifying session, which saw him qualify 13th, three-tenths shy of making it into the top ten shootout, but considerably quicker than he was in the final practice session.
“Like in Australia, it was one of the best laps I’ve done in my life,” said Alonso. “In Australia and here, I feel good with the car, I feel capable of pushing to the limit.
“The predictions were more pessimistic, especially after we couldn’t run yesterday.
“This morning we tried a few new pieces and everything worked as expected, but we were 17th and 19th with all the power available, and we faced qualifying thinking of fighting Sauber for the final places.
“In the end, 13th is the divine present.”
Vandoorne was understandably frustrated after his second successive failure to progress further than the opening qualifying session.
“We were a little bit compromised getting out of the garage and lost a little bit of time at the start of the session,” Vandoorne said.
“The lap was a little bit scrappy as well so definitely I felt there was the opportunity to be in Q2 today.
“With Fernando in 13th we were more or less on for a similar pace, so it is unfortunate but I think there are some positives at least.”
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