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McLaren set for boost from filming day running

McLaren's hopes of hitting the ground running at next week's final pre-season Formula 1 test have been boosted by the good timing of two 'filming' days scheduled this weekend.

Jenson Button, McLaren MP4-31

Jenson Button, McLaren MP4-31

XPB Images

The Woking-based team endured a difficult start to its 2016 preparations when running was limited at Barcelona this week by niggling reliability issues.

Although the team is in a dramatically better position than it was 12 months ago, it still endured more difficulties than it would have liked.

It lost time on the penultimate day when Jenson Button suffered a small fire caused by an hydraulic leak.

As a precaution, Honda fitted a brand new engine for the final day but, although Fernando Alonso was able to get out of the pits early on for installation laps, a coolant leak in a tricky place meant he never got back out again.

The result was that while pre-season favourite Mercedes signed off many of its system and reliability checks to complete 675 laps over four days, McLaren completed less than half that distance.

In fact, McLaren's 257 lap tally from four days, was just three ahead of the Manor outfit – and significantly 24 laps fewer than the brand new Haas F1 team.

 

Laps per team, cumulative infographic

The tight turnaround before the second test leaves McLaren and Honda little time to make big changes to its package, but scheduled filming days will at least give it a chance to ensure its car is running properly before then.

The plans to use the promotional days between these tests was decided weeks ago.

Teams are allowed a maximum of 100 kilometres per day, using demonstration specification tyres, for promotional purposes on two occasions during the year.

This should be enough to allow McLaren to uncover any issues with its power unit before Tuesday's test starts properly to ensure that other problems have been sorted.

It is understood that Honda will be introducing revisions to its engine for next week's test that it hopes will deliver progress in both power terms and reliability.

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