McLaren have had a mixed start to the 2018 season as their car which was previously marred by reliability issues has now found that is not that quick when it comes to one lap speed, despite the switch from Honda to Renault.
However, what is promising for McLaren is that a Renault powered car managed to win the Chinese GP and thus the engine does have the potential to go all the way.
Eric Boullier, McLaren’s racing director feels that the ‘ready’ version of the new MCL33 will be on display in the Spanish GP at Barcelona.
“The 2018 car is coming to Barcelona, and obviously we hope that’s the car we expect it to be,” Boullier said in an interview with Motorsport.com
“The car we have now, is as per plan, it’s not that we missed the [performance] targets with it.
“But we missed the schedule targets with it, which means the car we’ll have in Barcelona should have been in Australia.
“So we are running actually with an evolution of last year, and not the new car. And this car hopefully will be the one that we expect.” he added.
These schedule issues have caused some frustration in the McLaren camp but he’s excited about the upcoming weeks.
“This is what it is. We knew this, and we just have to take the best we can.
“So far we have been opportunistic, and we took the opportunities we’ve had with both drivers to take as many points as we could.
“It’s just frustrating to see that we have such performance or pace in the race, and we are unable to unlock yet that performance in qualifying.” he said.
Boullier doesn’t want to keep any expectations from the new update though as he knows that expectations could be detrimental and that true success will be achieved only if McLaren manage that elusive podium finish.
“No expectations, no need.
“I’ve been long enough in F1 to know you just celebrate when you’re on the podium, or on top of the podium.” Boullier added.
