Why there's cause for concern at McLaren

Any racer will tell you testing is all about encountering problems and trying to fix them - "better it happens now than in the race" they will argue.

But that doesn't really mean a team will welcome the difficulties it encounters. The more problems you have, the less you're able to focus on the stuff that really matters, such as understanding how your new car works, or how fast it is.

For McLaren-Honda, the cause for concern is clear. Formula 1 is five days into a 12-day pre-season testing schedule, and already precious running time is drip, drip, dripping away.

After a disastrous start in Abu Dhabi last November (just five laps completed with Honda's new V6 hybrid turbo engine in an interim 2014 car), McLaren's new 'size zero' MP4-30 managed just 12 across the first two days of the opening pre-season test at Jerez earlier this month.

McLaren had to call an early halt to its day again at Barcelona © LAT

There were encouraging signs of progress over the final two days of that test, as both Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso managed more than 30 laps. But problems continued to plague the car, and so it remained as the second pre-season test got underway at Barcelona on Thursday.

Jenson Button completed just 21 laps before what Honda described as a "faulty seal" on the MGU-K energy recovery unit forced him to stop for the day.

So far, McLaren has yet to complete a trouble-free day of testing: electrical issues, sensor problems, a water leak, excessive oil, water pressure, and now this. It wasn't exactly the perfect birthday present for Honda's motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai...

Perhaps save for the electrical trouble that ruined McLaren's post-season Abu Dhabi test, all of the problems encountered so far in 2015 have been relatively minor.

The reason for furrowed brows and concerned expressions among McLaren-Honda chiefs is what racing director Eric Boullier calls a "chain of consequences", whereby these reliability problems delay opportunities to explore the potential of the car, which means future reliability problems - unavoidable as you stress the car further - are not found as early as possible. The longer this goes on, the more trouble lays in wait for McLaren-Honda when the season starts in anger.

"If you can't run fast enough, you can't put the car at its limits in terms of brakes, cooling and aero, then you can't build the car properly, to the point that there will be consequences for the development programme," Boullier tells AUTOSPORT.

"That's why we need to be as early as possible to the performance limit of the car and put enough miles on it.

"The more we get to the limit, the more we find new problems so we have to run it at that as early as possible, and we have a long way to go and a lot of gains to unlock from experimentation. You can get much faster in the short term than in the aero side of things, [so] engine and power unit is the first focus.

"Anything that goes wrong is a concern. If you want to run with a few number of engines for the year [teams are limited to four per driver this season], you have to worry.

"A little stupid seal on an MGU-K like this can kill your day, and in Australia, your race. Everything needs to be treated with a high level of attention, and it's true we're not on top of that right now."

Button's day had started well, with the MP4-30 showing some pace © XPB

McLaren was running along quite nicely this morning, beginning to explore different set-ups on the MP4-30 (with its radical aerodynamic concept inspired by ex-Red Bull man Peter Prodromou) and setting laptimes that were far more respectable relative to the rest than those it managed at Jerez.

That pesky seal means Honda's engineers must produce a new component from its UK base in Milton Keynes, which won't be ready until Saturday. The broken seal will be temporarily replaced with a like-for-like component to allow Alonso to run tomorrow, but the chances are trouble will strike again.

More problems will mean more delays in ramping up performance. That means another day of testing potentially compromised; the chain of consequences will continue unbroken.

"There is enough time, but the more time we have [problems] the less time we have to be confident," adds Boullier. "The time to be confident is shrinking.

"There is a learning curve between us and Honda - both need to learn together. Also in the racing world there's a lot of reaction time to be included, some decision-making too.

"There's no stress though, it's a good relationship. We just want to be ambitious and as disciplined as we can be. There is a consistent pressure, but it's the same for Honda. We both want to be the best. We don't know when we'll get there, but we will."

The good news for McLaren in this situation is that its renewed status as a works partner means it can fix its problems much quicker than it otherwise might have been able to, argues Boullier.

It's also obvious that Honda has not come back into F1 just to make up the numbers, and Arai suggested to AUTOSPORT that his company planned for such a situation arising, meaning only one more day may be compromised by this faulty ERS seal (rather than an entire test) thanks to its contingency plan.

"It's a fault problem, not a design problem. It's a quality [of material] issue," Arai explains to AUTOSPORT. "We also have simulations which work out possibilities, so we have already prepared for many situations. We should imagine what might happen on the track and be ready to make a change."

That change will be made in time for day three of this test, so then will we get to see the McLaren-Honda running cleanly?

Arai smiles: "Maybe another problem is coming, like a pop-up monster: very quick!"

It's pertinent he mentions speed, for there's a feeling that perhaps Honda may need some whipping into shape in order to become sharp enough to take on the likes of Mercedes, which endured arguably its worst day of testing so far this year but still easily racked up more than double the number of laps managed by McLaren.

McLaren chairman Ron Dennis has already suggested Honda has implemented a new racing culture since deciding to return to F1, and Arai feels his company's racing experience gained in other series since it pulled out of the sport ahead of the 2009 season means it has the skills to get the job done.

Boullier and Arai have not had much to smile about on-track so far © XPB

"We are always racing, so I don't feel there's a gap since we left [F1]," he adds. "We have good pressure from McLaren, and we apply that pressure to McLaren. There is good communication. We have learned a lot during the pre-season tests in Abu Dhabi and Jerez."

But there is so much more to discover still, and the time drifting away down this river of unreliability can only lead to more disadvantage - especially given that McLaren-Honda's rivals have a season's worth of experience with the current technology, and thus have more mature engines at their disposal.

The saving grace is that so far McLaren-Honda has encountered no fundamental problems with its "aggressive" design. Boullier is hopeful the engine - which has been running in a detuned state thus far - will operate at full power before the end of this week's test, but "definitely before Australia". Until then, McLaren can only hope to make up for lost time.

"It's frustrating because we have to spend hours on every new issue, but we have the capacity and the ability to fix them," Boullier explains. "We're not relaxed. We would have preferred to have achieved 150 laps a day by now, but even with this total we would not be relaxed for Australia.

"It's frustrating but we have to go through this process. If we're a little behind, we have to deal with that. We have to go through this pain at this time."

'No pain, no gain', as they say. And both McLaren and Honda seem confident the pain will be worth it in the end.