McLaren unveils the MP4-31
After a disastrous 2015 season, McLaren hopes that its new car, the MP4-31, will allow them to climb back up the ranks.
2016 clearly must be the year of reconquest for McLaren, after a season dealing with the difficulties of its new collaboration with Honda. Ron Dennis, the CEO of the team, doesn’t beat around the bush to announce his ambition: « As we begin our second year of renewed partnership as McLaren-Honda, we all remain united to achieve our goal. The objective is to develop our team to reach our ambition: to win. »
The Briton therefore confirms what he had said when it was announced that Honda would replace Mercedes as the engine supplier. Indeed, he is convinced that the only possibility of winning the title is to have the resources and support of a manufacturer, which Mercedes was no longer willing to provide so as not to harm its own team: « Believe me: the support of an automotive multinational is the only platform on which true success can be achieved in modern Formula 1. As McLaren-Honda, we have made a firework of working together and winning together. Our determination has been further cemented and our relationship deepened through the common difficulties we faced last year. »
Obviously, one of the major areas of development over the winter was focused on the development of the Honda engine, as confirmed by Yasuhisa Arai, the head of the Japanese engine manufacturer’s competition program: « Building on what we learned last year, we made some changes during the break to the compressor and other engine components, in order to refine our concept from last year. During the eight days of winter testing, we will focus on the balance of the car with the new chassis and power unit, especially on the direction we have taken for the ERS (Editor’s note: the energy recovery system) »
But you can sense in the words of Eric Boullier, McLaren’s competition director, that we shouldn’t expect top-table performances during the upcoming tests in Barcelona: “We want to dedicate the first four days of testing to being methodical and cautious: make the most of the available time, focus on our core systems, operational procedures, and electronic checks. We need to verify our work in the garage before we can expect miracles on the track: we need to make sure we can walk before we run. After all, tests are just tests.”
With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr
