Share this article on LinkedIn Email

McLaren has admitted its performance in a difficult first week of Formula 1 pre-season testing was nowhere near the level it wanted.

The Woking-based team is already bracing itself for a frustrating campaign after Honda's revised 2017 F1 engine showed neither good reliability nor big progress in power terms at Barcelona.

With just four days left of testing left before the 2017 season starts in Australia on March 24-26, racing director Eric Boullier has confessed the situation is not too promising.

"It's not great, not at all at the level of what we wanted to show," Boullier told Autosport.

"We didn't run much, we didn't run enough, and we don't necessarily perform when we do run.

"But we still covered a few miles, we started working around the car and understanding how it works."

The reliability issues with an oil tank and the internal combustion engine on the first two days of the test cost McLaren valuable mileage - it racked up considerably less than half the running of Mercedes and Ferrari, while only Toro Rosso completed fewer laps.

Honda has also admitted it now has worries about the specification of engine McLaren can run at the Australian Grand Prix.

How much trouble is McLaren-Honda in?



Boullier has admitted the team is unlikely to be able to catch up on all it wanted to do before Melbourne.

"There is no solution to make up the time we lost," he said.

"Now, we need to get to the point and reprioritise the list of what we need to know.

"Then, unfortunately, some Fridays early in the season will be used as test sessions for what we should have done here.

"Nothing can be made up, you can't make up time. When time's lost, it's lost."

Boullier remains adamant that McLaren's chassis has hit performance targets, but is well aware that success this year will rest on Honda being able to turn around its situation.

Asked about the goals for 2017, Boullier said: "It depends which ones you're talking about. The goals we, McLaren, set ourselves, we achieved almost all of them.

"But our goals on track are different. We need to wait for Honda, according to what I saw this week, to make things right a little bit."