Stella feels that McLaren are “not far” from their rivals in the top four group
Reflecting more widely on how McLaren’s programme had unfolded during the second test, Stella spoke positively about the learnings that the team can take forwards on the MCL40.
“Overall it’s been a positive testing session, especially here in Bahrain,” the team chief explained. “The car behaved quite reliably – we pretty much signed off all the test items that we had planned, from functionality, from reliability and from race-ability point of view.
“This has allowed us to go through lots of laps and lots of learning, and I think we are at the point in which we can say that the potential of the car has been relatively understood and exploited. Obviously it’s all new, and before every run you do there is something to learn.
“But overall I think we have added a little bit of performance every single day, just because we were in condition to test and experiment, and play with set-up and play with aerodynamic optimisation and tyres, and I would say play also with the exploitation and the optimisation of the power unit, which is definitely a big ticket item.”
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