McLaren had a much more productive day of running on the final day of the in-season test at the Bahrain International Circuit. Stoffel Vandoorne was once again back behind the wheel and managed 81 laps.
The team spent much of the day testing a combination of set-up and handling configurations of the chassis, aero data correlation, and power unit driveability and reliability work.
“This has probably been our best day this season so far”, Vandoorne commented. “It’s the first time that we’ve had a day without any big problems, where we could actually get on with our programme. I think we completed everything we wanted to do, and we went through a lot of set-up stuff that we didn’t manage to do in Barcelona.”
Stoffel Vandoorne: “It’s been a very productive day and I’m very happy that we’ve been able to do so many laps”
“Especially after a difficult first test day and a difficult weekend, it wasn’t looking great, but I’m very pleased. For the team, it’s not been an easy week, after a double-header and then coming to the test with so many issues. They’ve been working flat-out, and they’ve done a very good job to get the car back out on track every time.”
“But we need every day to be this good, and there are no guarantees that it will be like this next time. We need to learn very carefully from what we’ve done, and hopefully carry that forward to the next event and see some improvements. It’s been very good for both me and the team to be able to try a number of different directions with the set-up. There were some new bits on the car – quite fundamental things – that we wanted to try out, and learn about, so it’s been really useful to see where the performance comes from, and very productive.”
“I actually felt very comfortable in the car. The chassis is behaving well, and we’ll bring some more new bits to the car over the next few races. The key is to be able to have a weekend where everything runs smoothly, which we haven’t been able to do yet. If we can do that, hopefully we can show we are making progress. We just need to keep working hard and wait for the moment when everything falls together.”
