Boullier defends his leadership role at McLaren

While McLaren has made a step in terms of reliability since its switch from Honda to Renault power over the winter, the team is clearly not where it needs to be.

It currently has 40 points compared to the 80 of fellow Renault engine user Red Bull, and the 41 of the Renault works team.

The recent removal of Tim Goss from his role as technical director was the first sign of an internal reshuffle on the engineering side, but Boullier is not anticipating any changes to the overall leadership of the organisation.

Asked if he believed he is still the man to lead McLaren's revival, Boullier said: "Yes, I think so.

"It's hard work. There's a lot of expectation obviously from McLaren and from a lot of people.

"In my past life I've been managing, rebuilding, restructuring a few teams and I won with all of them in any category there was.

"I think I know my job and we need to make sure we can make it, deliver it on time. The timing needs to be the right time, not the wrong expectation.

"No orders are needed, we know what we need to do, we had to improve the reliability and we had to improve performance.

"We have now some other teams with the same power unit, so at least we have some references as this is what we are working on. It's a long way to go."

Asked about potential areas of improvement, he said: "In an ideal world I would say a Formula 1 team, especially, you want to have a strong leadership at every stage with good communication, be as efficient and fluid and flexible as possible.

"Those look like generic words, but this is where we have to address these points if we believe we missed some of them."

Boullier acknowledged that keeping the staff motivated is a key area of his responsibility.

"I think it's part of any leader or manager to make sure you keep the morale of your troops as high as possible.

"And as I said before, the wrong thing is to have the wrong expectation, it's to be very clear, so we are very transparent with our team.

"They know exactly what we are doing at the track, they know exactly what the feedback is from the track. We do the same with people in all the company so at least there is no wrong expectation."

He declined to elaborate on any changes to the technical team in the wake of Goss being moved aside.

"No, we don't want to comment much about what we are doing. Obviously we are trying to be the best and being the best means also looking at how we can be more efficient in terms of our organisation.

"There is some constant improvement in everything as well, it's part of the life for a Formula 1 team, to keep looking at how to deliver better and more."