McLaren heading in "good direction" at Barcelona F1 test

Turvey's wealth of simulator experience ensured he was given the nod for the first day of in-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya on Tuesday ahead of reserve Kevin Magnussen and Stoffel Vandoorne, who is a member of McLaren's young driver programme.

With McLaren running the rule over a raft of new components as confirmed to AUTOSPORT by racing director Eric Boullier, Turvey firmly believes in the approach being adopted by McLaren in partnership with new power-unit supplier Honda.

"The philosophy previously had been similar for a few years, and this new direction I feel is a good direction," added Turvey.

"It makes the car more driveable, and long-term it is a good direction.

"These concepts take time to develop, and I am sure there is more potential in this package.

"At the minute there is a lot of excitement and things to try. It has been an exciting year from a development point of view."

One of Turvey's primary tasks has been to assess the correlation between his work in the simulator and the car itself.

The 2006 McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Award winner, currently competing in Super GT with the Dome Honda team, added: "It seemed from the few laps I did this morning it was OK.

"It is about trying to find out where the differences are and trying to improve correlation.

"There have certainly been a lot of aero changes to the car and the characteristics of the car seem different in the simulator but also different on the track, so that is interesting to see and feel."

The 28-year-old, now in his sixth season with McLaren, also noted the car to still be "a bit nervous" at the rear, following on from Jenson Button's woes in Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix.

Button, who takes over the wheel on Wednesday, described the first 30 laps of the race as the scariest of his life due to the instability of the rear end.

"He struggled a lot in the race, and when I saw his comments I thought 'Maybe this is not the best track to be doing development work'," said Turvey, laughing.

"We started with aero runs in the first couple of hours and had a few sensor issues which unfortunately made that programme a little shorter, but we still got some useful data from that.

"After that we worked on more aero running, looking at the rear wing, running through some different options.

"We're looking at the upcoming races so we ran a Canada-spec rear wing, just data gathering, trying to drive consistent laps, not using the DRS on every lap."