F1: McLaren stopped by 'minor' problem

McLaren has conceded to enduring a day of frustration after being hampered by a coolant leak it has described as "minor."

Fernando Alonso completed just three installation laps early on before his day was brought to a very premature end, undoing some of the good work of the previous three days of the first pre-season test at Barcelona.

"Unfortunately, the leak we experienced on the car was in a tricky position, which meant it took longer than usual to locate and fix," director of engineering Matt Morris said. "It's always frustrating when a small issue hampers your running for much of a day, but thankfully it's relatively minor and we can now look to preparing the car for the second test on Tuesday.

"Testing is testing, and it gives us the opportunity to identify and work on reliability issues before we start the season."

Over the first three days McLaren managed a total of 206 laps, although a minor fire caused by a hydraulic leak brought Jenson Button's running in the MP4-31 to an early end on Wednesday, with Alonso's issue compounding matters.

"We've done a good amount of running and already learned a lot about our package, which should stand us in good stead for next week," Morris added. "We're definitely ahead of where we were last year in terms of system checks and integration, so at the second test we'll be able to focus more on race simulations and setup, as well as characterizing our package's performance."

Alonso described his day as "disappointing" but tried to put a brave face on the matter, and with an eye to improving next week.

"It's good news that although the issue we had on the car meant we had to miss a lot of today's running, it's not a major problem and will be fixed in time for next week's test," said Alonso. "Overall, we've managed a good number of laps during this test, which means we have a lot of data to analyze and learn from.

"Over the weekend we'll work hard to get everything prepared for next week, with the aim of getting as much time on track as possible."

HONDA HAS WORK TO DO

From power unit supplier Honda's perspective it knows it has some way to go for its side of the car to be ready for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

"To summarize our first four days of testing, we had a positive start, with confirmation of the improvement of the ERS deployment," new Honda boss Yasuke Hasegawa said. "However, the latter days revealed there are areas of the power unit reliability we need to work on to prepare for Australia onwards. In the second test next week, we are aiming to gauge the full performance of the car."

Originally on Autosport.com