McLaren could fit in extra Honda run before 2015 F1 testing starts
McLaren may run its Honda development car again before the first 2015 Formula 1 test at Jerez, pending investigations into the electrical problems that blighted its running in Abu Dhabi
The Woking team brought the MP4-29H to this week's post-season Abu Dhabi test to allow it to check systems with Honda's first V6 hybrid turbo F1 engine, but it completed just three full laps across two days thanks to recurring electrical problems.
McLaren's racing director Eric Boullier said the car would be sent back to Woking for a "full investigation", and did not rule out using another filming day to run the car before the first test of next season, if Honda cannot solve all the problems on a dyno.
When asked whether the car would run again before the Jerez test, Boullier replied: "Not now, but maybe. We will see after the investigation and running on the dyno and correcting all these issues.
"We brought the basic technical layout of our engine here. It didn't work - but a lot of it can be solved on a dyno.
"I'm not talking about driveability or pure performance - for that we need a car on-track - but we can make sure all the systems are working on a dyno before Jerez."
Boullier said the test had still been positive for McLaren and Honda, despite the lack of running.
"It's true that we didn't run a lot, but we went through a lot operationally and when we didn't run we were dismantling the car and learning a lot about process and what could be wrong in the future," Boullier explained.
"It's obviously not what we wanted to achieve - our target was to run the car on the track and run all the systems.
"It's not good enough and we're not happy, but at least we learned things.
"We were not expecting to develop anything here other than trying the systems, so in some way we didn't achieve this so we failed, but it [the test] is still a bonus, because going into Jerez with the same problems would hurt us much more."
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