McLaren surprised by 'disappointing' Honda problem

McLaren was surprised to suffer a problem with its power unit on the opening day of pre-season testing, with racing director Eric Boullier describing the Honda issue as "disappointing."

Honda discovered an oil system issue after the installation lap on the first day of testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, forcing Fernando Alonso to spend nearly seven hours in the garage as investigatory work started. It was eventually decided to replace the power unit in order to get the car back out on track as quickly as possible, with Alonso adding 28 laps in the final two hours of the day.

"We had an oil system problem," Boullier said. "Obviously that's all what we know now. Honda asked for the PU to go back and they are investigating what's going on so we will know later on and I guess they will tell us what happened.

"It's disappointing because yesterday we had a filming day, we did 100 kilometers and more or less everything went right. So obviously this morning it came a as a little bit of a surprise to have a problem with this PU, but we have to wait on Honda now to come back to us."

While Boullier acknowledged Alonso's frustration at so little running on Monday, he says rectifying such problems are part and parcel of pre-season testing.

"He knows minute after minute what's going on, so yes, obviously not very happy this morning, but he was here yesterday as well and he drove the car yesterday for a few laps, and he got a feel for the car and I guess he was rather happy than unhappy yesterday.

"It was just a filming day with demo tires but he could have already a feel of the car and this morning was obviously unexpected. This is what it is – we are here to test as well. We are here to make sure that everything will be in order in Australia."

Alonso himself says he was unable to get a feeling for the MCL32 over the past two days of running but was encouraged by the overall improvements offered by the 2017 cars.

"Yesterday with the demo tires and all the things, in the end you are filming because you are using the same opportunity to take images for your sponsor and things like that, so you are not concentrating on evaluating the performance," Alonso said. "Today with the proper tires we did 29 laps but they were not quality laps, they were just checking laps and many installation laps – things were not running at the full potential, so it's difficult to have a feeling right now.

"I think the only conclusion is that the cars look nice; the cars are definitely faster in the corners so it's good to come back to that feeling of the downforce in the corners and be able to push the car to the limit a little bit more, so I'm happy with that. I saw some other cars running alongside on the track and they look very, very good. So I'm happy for that, happy for the sport for going in the right direction – and probably apologize to the fans for the last five or six years that they saw horrible cars."