McLaren say they must be ambitious

The McLaren technical director Eric Boullier says his team needs to be ambitious in the belief that they can return to the top after a torrid five years.

It has been well documented that McLaren have ditched the Honda engine and now work with Renault in the hope of better, more consistent running.

But after a difficult and limited pre-season testing, the team may well have realised how difficult it’s going to be to achieve their goal.

McLaren, and every other team lost time during week one of testing due to the cold weather but unlike other teams, they remained hampered throughout most of the second week.

The team had an electrical fault on Tuesday and an oil leak on Wednesday.

Vandoorne managed to get the most consistent running out of the car on Thursday but a turbo issue demanded another engine change on Friday.

However, on the Friday Fernando Alonso posted the third fastest time of the day warming the hearts of McLaren fans going into the start of the 2018 season.

Boullier said: “The last three years were difficult. We are now trying to get McLaren back where it should be.

“Like anything, you don’t do it in one day. There are maybe a few glitches. We have not lost our capability of designing fast cars, and I hope you will see it on-track soon.

“We have to be ambitious. That’s also why to be ambitious we have to take risks.

“All this, we need to put everything back together and are working together.”