McLaren racing director Eric Boullier says that the team hopes to be in a strong position in Monaco and Montreal, even if it is still struggling with a lack of downforce.
He accepts that the next three races, which feature a lot of high speed corners and put a premium on aero efficiency, are going to be tough.
“It’s going to be quite, quite painful, we know this,” he said when asked by this writer. “This is why we are in aggressive development mode already. Every race we bring parts, and I feel a bit of a relief today, for a lot of reasons. We spent the winter ensuring that we had a good correlation between the wind tunnel and the track, and it looks like it works out.”
Regarding Monaco and Montreal he agreed that the team could be at less of a disadvantage.
“Yeah obviously, because less downforce [in Montreal], and Monaco will be a different story as well, because in terms of fuel management you don’t have to worry. I think by then we should have recovered.”
Meanwhile Boullier said it was unwise to make too many judgements based on Malaysia, where McLaren lost performance relative to the season opener in Australia.
“You have to be careful. We struggled this weekend, because of the heat. If you look back at Friday morning we were OK. We were not in a position to win the race, but our relative pace was much better compared with the others. I think with the heat we knew we would suffer because the tyres were degrading much more, and overheating, and this is where the other teams gained.”
Adam Cooper F1 