Is it a drama or a crisis at McLaren?

At what point does a drama become a crisis?

It's a question already swirling around McLaren and Honda after the second day of running at Jerez, when hopes of its stuttering test programme moving up a gear failed to materialise.

Fresh from the sensor problems that limited its opening day of running with Fernando Alonso to just six laps on Sunday, Jenson Button could only manage the same distance on day two.

His best lap of 1m54.655s was a distant 33 seconds off the pace. With an average speed of 90mph, it was probably an effort that Honda's British Touring Car Championship Civic Tourer could target...

McLaren had been bracing itself for a challenging time this week, but perhaps it didn't expect things to be quite this difficult.

What laptime would this combination manage around Jerez? © LAT

While it has kept repeating its mantra that what it needs above all else this week is "patience", 12 laps in two days was much less than had been hoped.

Even on Sunday night, racing director Eric Boullier had talked of a target of 60 laps for the second day of running.

On current form, McLaren's inauspicious start to testing has gone even worse than Red Bull's and Renault's first test of the new turbo V6 engine 12 months ago, which rightly felt like a crisis. Rewind to 2014, and Sebastian Vettel managed eight laps in one day with a best effort of 1m38.3s - still better than McLaren right now.

But in the Jerez paddock on Monday night, the Woking team said there was finally evidence of light at the end of the tunnel.

The sensor problems that had dogged day one were gone and an unspecified glitch that was exposed on day two had finally been cured to allow one trouble-free lap right at the end of the day.

In theory that should at least allow the team to finally push on with its testing programme properly on Tuesday. That was certainly Button's belief.

"We always knew the first test was going to be difficult, it always is," he said. "It's not as straightforward as it used to be with sticking an engine straight into the car and trying to pound round. It's a very complex system now.

For McLaren-Honda in 2015, see Red Bull-Renault in 2014 © XPB

"We've had a few things that we've been able to solve now. And tomorrow we'll see where we stand."

Let's not forget though that more mileage was exactly what McLaren had predicted 24 hours ago...

Yet beyond the immediate struggles of the week, there remains a conviction that this is not the precursor to a year of frustration.

Instead the mood inside the team is more about this week being an inevitable growing pain of having produced a "size zero" car - so named because of the skin-tight packaging at the rear.

Boullier said: "We have been quite extreme with packaging our car, and every technical solution that we've brought to the car is something we believe will help us to close the gap to Mercedes quickly.

"Being brave and ambitious means we're not reliable, and we're struggling with electrical issues, which are quite difficult to fix. They are fixable... but I want to be cautious on this because every time we try to fix one [problem], we open up something else further."

The scope of this week's delays, the complications in finding out where trouble is starting, are all a legacy of this aggressive approach to the Honda packaging - and fixing relatively simple things is not easy because of the way everything is packed so well inside the car.

But that is the price that the team feels it must pay if it is to close the gap to Mercedes, which not only has the pace but also has a year's more knowledge of the new turbo hybrids.

Button hasn't spent much time in the cockpit © LAT

Reflecting on Mercedes' strong start to Jerez, McLaren chief Ron Dennis said: "Are we surprised that Mercedes can do 100+ laps? No, not at all because that is where we would expect them to be coming out of a season where they were dominant and were effectively developing a given package.

"If you are behind in any sport - catching requires you to accelerate faster than they are running. Otherwise you will not catch them up. Have we taken some calculated technical risks? Yes. These relate to technologies that we are the first to deploy - and we will work hard to get performance advantages.

"And it probably will not even be Australia before we know how we are doing. I expect two or three races before we really get the lie of the land. And we will try through the remaining tests, especially the next two, to take away the consequences of this densely packaged concept."

We must not forget either that this is testing - and testing is about discovering problems before the racing starts. Some things are just not exposed until a hot car is being pushed to the limit - with all the vibrations and G-forces that entails - in the real world.

Boullier added: "You can use simulations and dynos all you want but you need to be on track to put the whole package together.

"We have the 2015 car here, and we have to go through some pain and some glitches to allow us to run, and obviously we don't want to take any risks either. If you blow up the engine, you could face something damaging the car, and you'll lose more time. We have to take things step-by-step.

"We just want to win, so we have to be better than the best, which last year was Mercedes. It was the aim of McLaren-Honda to be as brave as possible so we can close the gap as soon as possible.

McLaren's intended 2003 design never made it to a GP © LAT

"[Honda] came up with some good technical solutions that maybe bring some reliability issues, but they know where to go; they have the people, the resources, and the technology. So they can match [Mercedes]."

The talk remains positive - but it is pretty obvious that such optimism is pointless unless there is genuine progress on track.

History has a strange way of repeating itself, especially in sport, and McLaren has been burned in the past by going aggressive with a car design and it not quite working.

One McLaren team member famously said at the launch of one such bold car: "Our long-term strategy is to re-establish the team as a consistent winner, through increasing overall competitiveness and reliability. To achieve this demands significant, rather than incremental, steps."

Does that sound familiar? Indeed, it's a quote that would fit quite well today for what is going on with the MP4-30. But it actually came ahead of the launch of McLaren's ultimately doomed MP4-18 back in 2003. That car never raced.

There is nothing to suggest that McLaren-Honda is heading for the kind of new-car crisis it faced back then, but equally there is no guarantee yet that what has happened this week is just a bit of early drama that will be quickly forgotten when the season starts.

The answers will come within the next 48 hours.